


The Delusion Sentimentality Compensation Federation (DSCF)

by Pastelbandana



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Drugs, Human Kiibo, I'll probably update this with more later, Revamping some of the tagging~, Slow Burn, Some angst, Spoilers, as in "medical" drugs, lots of curse words, rated M for Iruma's mouth, which basically means suggestive things and curse words
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13446117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pastelbandana/pseuds/Pastelbandana
Summary: When he woke up, his sense were assaulted with the feeling of being drowned. His head felt heavy, his body felt numb, and he was enveloped in darkness with no hope of seeing light. He couldn’t tell if he was breathing or if he was dead; the pressure on his chest was a crushing heaviness that seemed permanent. His whole being felt as if it was in limbo, laying on a fine line between existing and not.-Why does everything give him a vague sense of deja-vu?





	1. Chapter 1

When he woke up, his senses were assaulted with the feeling of being drowned. His head felt heavy, his body felt numb, and he was enveloped in darkness with no hope of seeing light. He couldn’t tell if he was breathing or if he was dead; the pressure on his chest was a crushing heaviness that seemed permanent _._ His whole being felt as if it was in limbo, laying on a fine line between existing and not.

Then there was a hiss, as if steam was being released from a pressurized container, and he felt hands greedily grabbing at him, harshly pressing into his armpits, dragging him up from his cocoon of terror. His hair stuck uncomfortably to his face, his body dripping (was it water or sweat he couldn’t tell) as it was exposed to frigid air.

The hands brought his body onto a soft surface and he sunk into it.

“Participant… Ouma Kokichi… hear... “ Every sound around him was mushed up and he could barely pick up on the words that were being said around him.  

There was only silence after that. He tried to move his mouth, tried to do  _anything,_ but his body refused to cooperate. It let him lay there, weak and vulnerable, like a dog with it's stomach exposed. 

He could feel the hands pressing into the inside of his slicked up elbow, pressing down hard for moment before lifting up. 

"...alive..." The muffled voice said again. 

With a jolt, he felt the surface he was on begin to move. He felt panic surge up into his throat, glued in place and choking him without anywhere to go. He was really getting tired of his body not responding to him. 

The surface moved at a steady pace for a few minutes before it eventually slowed to a stop. 

The hands from before came back, lifting him up and running coarse material over him and he gradually felt the slick of whatever had been on him dry off and go away. After that, a soft material was placed on him,  _clothes_ his brain numbly supplied him. The clothes stuck to him slightly, his body not completely dry, but he did not mind. The hands lifted him up even higher and he felt gravity pull harder on him as he left whatever he had been lying on. He wasn't suspended mid-air for long, though, as the hands gently placed and neatly arranged his limp limbs on an even softer surface.  

For a minute, there was nothing again. Then, there was a subtle prick in the inside of his elbow and a pressuring, clamp-like item, was put on his pointer finger. 

He felt the hand raise his arm and what felt to be a warm blanket spread over his body, placing the other arm they were holding up back down to his side. 

It was weird. Most of his body was warm, save for one arm and that pissed him off. It made his senses tingle more than they already were, an unbearable itch-like feeling beginning to form in his arm. 

He heard a slam, and then there was nothing. Not like there had been much before, so it wasn't a huge loss, in fact he welcomed the emptiness.  _Unless,_ his brain thought,  _there is somebody there, watching, but you wouldn't know that now, would you?_

Oh, right. It seems that that lump of anxiety in his throat didn't plan on going anywhere else anytime soon. 

He tried to stay awake for as long as he could, but it was a losing battle. He couldn't move still, he couldn't think of anything (other than the fact that there was possibly someone there) and he didn't know where he was... the list went on forever. 

He drifted into an uncomfortable sleep, exhausted from his own thoughts. 

* * *

When he awoke again, he could finally see, at least a bit. His vision was blurry—the dim lighting probably didn't help his swimming vision—but it was good enough for him to finally assess his surroundings. 

He was laying on a soft bed, his left arm had an IV in the crook of his elbow, and his finger was clamped down by a pulse monitor. He briefly considered removing it, ( _he wanted the_   _horrible pressure to be gone, please, there was too much pressure everywhere)_ but decided against it in the end. He didn't know if it would set off an alarm somewhere when his pulse suddenly just disappeared, and he wasn't too keen to find out anytime soon what would happen. He still had so many questions and not enough answers. 

Aside from the bed and the IV pole to his left, there was only a nightstand desk to his right. It was topped by two remotes and a digital clock, which informed him that it was currently 3 A.M. Most importantly though, there was certainly no one else in the room that he could see. 

Reassured, he let out a sigh. 

With nothing else to do, he watched as the IV dripped, dripped, dripped, counting the drips as if he was counting sheep. 

He fell asleep again shortly after. 

* * *

When he woke up, the lights were on, and there was a note attached to the pole that read "Press "Call Nurse" button on remote once you wake up. Thank you." 

He blinked blearily and, annoyed, reached for the remote on the nightstand next to him with the big red button in the middle that said "Call Nurse." He pressed it once, and waited a second. Then, as if something inside him had silently snapped, he began to mash the button for a few seconds, feeling a sort of giddy, unexplainable laughter well up inside him, before putting it back onto the nightstand. 

His door slammed open as nurse rushed in. 

"A-Are you okay?" She spoke frantically as she started to look him over, "You hit the button so many times I thought something happened to you!" 

"Sorry, my hand slipped." 

She seemed to relax a bit at that.

"Oh, that's alright, just try not to do it again. I'm glad that you're up though. I'm sure all of your friends will be glad to see you." She said. 

"Friends?" He questioned. He wasn't remembering any friends. In fact, he wasn't remembering why he was here at all. The past two times he'd woken up, he'd been too frenzied on assuring his safety that his brain forgot to ask the important questions like how, why or where, he wished it had though, maybe he'd be able to ask more questions now if he had. 

"You and your friends were all in a horrible accident," she said quietly, looking quite somber.

"I don't remember any accident." 

"Yes, you were all in an accident, as a group," she responded, a look of pity on her face still. 

"All of us? Who's all of us?" 

"You and your friends," She repeated herself, "you probably don't remember this because you got your head hit pretty hard. Everybody suffered some form of head trauma from it. What a horrible accident— so horrible." He knew he should be concentrating more on her words, but Ouma couldn't stop thinking about how ugly and pathetic fake pity was making her look. Something did catch his attention though. 

"Everybody has some head trauma? What is that supposed to mean?" He probed, making a conscious effort to keep the suspicion out of his voice. 

"None of you seem to remember the accident, which might be a good thing. Oh, how horrible it was. Simply horrible. There was so much blood everywhere when they found all of you. You and your friends are lucky that they got you here as fast as they did." 

"But how di-" 

"Shh, no more now," she cut him off. "You get some more rest now, okay?"  

She kept talking as she walked over to the door, and he found himself swallowing with frustration. 

"When you wake up, hit the button again. I'll see you later Ouma-san." She said as she closed the door. 

"Wait!" He shouted, but she did not come back. 

He looked over to the big red button, sitting there so innocently and tempting. She, or at least somebody, would have to come back in if he rang it again. Regardless, he didn't want to deal with her again right now. 

He couldn't shake the feeling that what she had said didn't match up to  _something_ he knew, something he felt but couldn't place. 

He might have been sitting in a room full of silence, but with thoughts ripping around like a hurricane, there was no true quietness. 

He didn't go to sleep, too caught up in his own thoughts and feeling strangely as if he had slept for an eternity. He didn't need any more sleep, he needed to know more. 

Too many questions and crushing dread were his fitful companions for the rest of the very long night. 

* * *

 The next time he called the nurse, and refrained from mashing the button like yesterday despite something whispering to him and tempting to just to give her a little hell for yesterday, it was 10 A.M. the next morning. He hadn't slept a wink, despite the boredom of just staring into the wall, lost in his own thoughts. 

This time, she came in, with a kit swinging by her side, more composed and less like she was having a nervous break down, which wasn't as good of a look on her, but that didn't matter right now. He was going to ask her what he wanted to this time, and there was no way she could just leave this time when she just walked into the room. She had no excuse to leave yet. 

"I have-"

"-Some great news for you!" She chirped in, cutting him off. "After I give you a tour of the hospital, we're going have you meet all your friends! Doesn't that sound great?" 

He pursed his lips into a tight line, thinking it over quickly. 

He wanted answers from  _her,_ but if he met with the others, maybe they could help him fill in some gaps too. Maybe what she was saying was true, maybe he was just overthinking, overanalyzing the situation too much, and everything was fine. 

He nodded his head and her smile lit up even more. 

"Great!" She was too bubbly for her own good, he thought bitterly. "Do you want to walk or do you want me to get the wheelchair for you?" 

"I'll walk," he said. 

"Alright, then." She said. "But first, let me get these rid of these for you." 

She opened the kit and pulled out a small piece of gauze and a band-aid. 

"Stay still."

She quickly removed the IV from his arm and put the gauze over it before securing it with the band-aid. Removing the finger pulse reader was simple and easy and he'd honestly forgotten that it was there when he hadn't been moving it around to feel it's off balance heaviness. 

"There, all done! Now let's get you up." 

She backed away from the bed so he could get up. 

He tried to swing his legs around to get up, but his legs felt like they were made of led. They were heavy and unresponsive. So, instead, he used his weak, trembling, hands to shift his entire body around on the bed so his legs were dangling off the side, just enough to touch the ground with the tips of his toes. 

He once again used his hands to assist his legs in standing on the ground as he started to stand up- and then fell down as his legs crumpled out from under him. 

The nurse rushed forward to catch him before he could give the ground a painful high-five with his face. 

"Woah, careful there," she said, helping him to stand upright once more. 

But it was no good. He must have looked like a newborn fawn with how he couldn't keep himself upright. His legs felt so  _weak_ and suddenly he was feeling that same weakness spread throughout his body. Finally, after the fifth time of almost collapsing onto the ground, she placed him back on the bed. 

"I'm going to get the wheelchair for you. Your muscles aren't ready to walk again yet." 

It didn't take more than 30 seconds for her to return, meaning she must have anticipated that he was going to be needing it at some point. Why'd she even let him try if that was the case? To show him just how powerless and weak he was in this situation? That he had to rely on her? 

Whatever the reason was, at least he tried to stand on his own, and honestly, the only reason he allowed himself to be placed in the wheelchair was the ever looming promise of seeing the only other people in this god forsaken place that might tell him the truth and not scamper off like this lady. He needed to see these "friends," no matter what he had to do he needed to achieve that goal. 

She pushed him out of the room, and he bit his lip as he realized there was no way he'd be able to get around without her if he needed to. His arms were still too weak. 

She was oblivious to his plight as she began to walk down the hallway. 

"This place is pretty much just one big square," she informed him, "here's the dinning hall, and here's the gaming room, you can play some games while you eat but please clean up after yourself, we're nurses, not maids. Oh, and speaking about nurses, here's the nurse's station in the middle here..." He silently observed that there was nobody there at all at that moment. She continued to push him down the hallway, pointing to the doors of the rooms as she told him what they were. He noticed all of the doors that weren't labeled with universal symbols for things had little pixels of what looked to be people hanging as if they were plaques on their doors. He would confirm that theory when they went back around to his room, right now he was too into memorizing the layout of the hospital. 

"And this is the door to the rest of the hospital. Right now you're in a special ward that has two split parts to it. But don't worry, all your friends are on this side with you, the other side has other people who are in for similar problems, but we thought it'd be best to keep you and all your friends on one side together. The other side is locked good, so don't worry about anybody you don't know coming over here," she said with a smile as she turned him to the left and began walking down the corridor again. There was nothing really interesting here either, but his theory about the rooms was confirmed when she informed him that the pixel-like sprites represented his friends.  

Once they finished going all around, (and she was right it was one big square, but actually really big) they began to loop back around to his room. But at the last hallway right before it became the hallway that led to his room, there was a sturdy-looking metal door. There was nothing else there, just the door. 

"What's this door for?" He asked her craning his neck up to meet her eyes as she looked down at him.

"This is the door to the other part I was telling you about." She rapped her fist on the door and tried to jiggle the handle a few times in front of him. "See? It's locked pretty good. The handle is hardly budging." 

He nodded, satisfied with her explanation. 

"Do you have any more questions about anything here? I'm here to help you." 

"No, I think I understand now, thank you." He said, mulling everything over. 

"Okay, well then, if you don't have anymore questions then I'll bring you to the room where you can meet with all your friends. The other nurses should be finished telling the others that they're going to meet each other again finally now too." 

"They haven't met with each other before?" He almost wanted to scream, but held it back with all his resolve. He thought they would know more than him, not be like horses all strung up together with blindfolds over their faces.  

"No, we've been waiting for everybody to wake up before we let you guys talk to each other again. Wouldn't feel right if the whole group wasn't there, right?" 

Oh, he was so fucked. 

* * *

Waiting for everybody wasn't so bad if he ignored the growing tension in his chest he was choosing to ignore. He felt the need to put on a front for the others, but he couldn't find the exact root for that need. If they truly were "friends" then maybe one of them was in a wheelchair too? Or maybe it just wouldn't matter and they wouldn't care regardless. 

The first person the nurses brought into the conference looking room was a man with green hair who smiled at Ouma charmingly when he walked in. His ears had multiple earrings on them, and Ouma had to admit that the man was quite attractive. He could see how he could be friends with such a pretty face. Maybe he had a brain to boot! Oh, wouldn't that be nice. He sat down at the chair across from Ouma.

"I'd introduce myself, but I think it'd be best to just wait for the others. It'd be a pain to reintroduce myself to everyone repeatedly," he said calmly, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back in the chair. 

Ouma nodded in agreement. It would be a waste of breath and energy to do something unnecessary over and over again. 

The others started to flow in at a pretty regular rate after that. There was a blond girl with little clips in her hair and a strawberry-blonde who looked quite flushed for some reason and another boy with hair as purple as his. By the time they had all gathered in the room, Ouma did a quick headcount and found that there were 13 of them there total. 

13\. "All of you." "Accident." A 13 person accident where they all have some kind of head trauma that caused them to not remember certain things? Highly,  _highly,_ unlikely, and a quick glance around the room told Kokichi that a few others were using what little gray matter they had to come to a similar, if not same, conclusion that he had. Simply put, bullshit. 

The silence was tense as they all glanced around the room. Finally, someone, the blonde from earlier, spoke up.

"How about we reintroduce ourselves?" She suggested with a smile.

"Reintroduce?" A small boy said from his chair. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, the doctor told us we were all friends, so clearly we must know each other, we just forgot! So, thus "reintroducing" ourselves." 

"You haven't figured out that's probably a lie by now?" Ouma had to speak up. There was something wrong here, and he wasn't going to let her just go along with their plans to fuck with their brains however they wanted. 

The girl suddenly got a weeping look on her face, and grabbed her right arm with her left. 

"I know...I'm just... I'm just trying to break the tension a bit. Sorry." 

"Well, I for one, think she has the right idea anyway," a boy with a mask over his mouth said, "it will do us no good to not even know the names of the people we are stuck here with, no?" 

"Fine, I'll start!" The strawberry-blond said, jabbing a finger towards herself. "Name's Iruma Miu, remember it fucking well because it's what you'll be screaming later tonight when your left hand is down your fucking pants." 

"Iruma-Chan!" The blonde cried out. 

"Yeah! Take notes people! Scream it just like that!" Iruma shouted as she laughed at some of the faces in the room.

The other half just sighed and introduced themselves. 

The short boy began. 

"Name's Hoshi Ryoma. That's all." 

"Come on! You have to put more effort into it! Like this. My name's Momota Kaito!" 

"Yes, well I quite like when my ears aren't ringing from being screamed into. My name is Shinguji Korekiyo, and I look forward to finding what beautiful truth we can all uncover together kehehe."

"My name is Iidabashi Kiibo. Pleasure to see everyone." 

"My name is Toujou Kirumi."

"I'm Akamatsu Kaede," the blonde girl who had finally gotten a grip on herself from earlier said.

"My name's Chabashira Tenko. Did anybody else realize that the hospital split up the boy's and girl's side as best as they could? Thank God I won't have to hear any males doing anything at night." 

"Oh, but you're okay with hearing females do such things?" Chabashira's face quickly became flushed at that comment. The girl with white hair who had said that laughed at Chabashira's reaction. 

"My name is Yonaga Angie! Atua says He is very thankful we are all meeting again!" 

"Amami Rantarou. Nice to meet you," the green-haired boy with all the earrings said. 

"Wow, you should help me some of my cosplays someday. Oh, sorry, my name is Shirogane Tsumugi." 

"Name is Gokuhara Gonta! Hope we all get along!" 

"I'm Ouma Kokichi," He said while glancing around the table, trying to understand why he was feeling so weird. 

Was this what deja-vu felt like? 

* * *

 

 They spent another 30 minutes or so discussing their situation. They talked with hushed voices now, well aware that somebody could be listening to their conversation. 

Kokichi found out that the others weren't exactly buying the 13 people coincidental accident bullshit story either. Even Gokuhara, who didn't speak the best Japanese, understood that he was being lied to at least a bit. 

"So what should we do?" Kiibo asked. "Should we call them out on it and see if they tell us the truth?"

"I don't think we have much of a choice in what we can do," Hoshi said. "We're not exactly all in the best condition right now." 

He had a point. Nobody was in a wheelchair like Ouma, but a few of them did have crutches, and he could see the hands of a few people shaking like his. There was no way they could get out of here like this, and as Kokichi had just learned before, they did need to rely on the nurses for a lot, unfortunately.  

"But I'm sure they'll let us go once we're better, right?" Ouma could have sworn he heard Akamatsu say something, but there was something that suddenly hit him like a freight train. 

"But what are we "getting better" from in the first place?" Ouma said. "Why are we here in the first place?" 

The table grew silent. Had they been kidnapped and brought here? But, then, why couldn't they remember that? 

"For now, I think the best option would be to lay low and gather as much info as we can. Even if they're telling us lies, if enough lies don't match up, we'll know for sure that they're hiding something on a particular subject," Amami said calmly. He seemed to not be as fazed in this situation as everybody else was, but Kokichi could definitely tell that he was feeling some emotions about their situation with how his face seemed to be stuck in a perma-glare, lip pursed tightly. 

"I think that's a good idea." 

They sat the rest of their time in silence before the nurses came in to tell them that they all needed to back to their rooms to get some rest. 

As the same fake bubbly nurse wheeled him out of the room, she asked him a question. 

"So how did you like meeting everyone?" 

"It was great!" He said, eyes shining. "I can't wait to see them again!" 

She chuckled. 

"You can see everyone again more often starting tomorrow. For tonight, you should stay in your room and rest. Wouldn't want you to get worked up after just waking up so soon." 

She brought him back to his room as she said she would, picking him up as if he was nothing but skin and bones, and placed him back on the bed. She said something about going to get him dinner as she shuffled out of the door, leaving the wheelchair in the room with Ouma. While she was gone, Ouma grabbed the other remote next to his bed and began to mess around with the controls on it, finding it to be what controlled multiple things in the room. The lights, the bed, and... the T.V.? He glanced around again. There was no T.V. in his room, so why was there a button for it? Once again though, it seemed as if the nuses hadn't had to go far to get him dinner as she came back in perhaps two minutes. She handed him his dinner, which was nothing more than some miso soup. She explained to him that they didn't want to overwhelm his system with a full course meal yet, that they had to build him back up to those kinds of foods. 

"Hey, is there a hidden T.V. in here?" He asked her before she could leave.

"A hidden T.V.? What do you mean?" 

"On this remote, it has a power button for a T.V., but there is clearly no T.V. in my room that I can see. Does it pop out of the wall or something like that?" He probed her. 

"Oh, no. That would be pretty cool, but there's no hidden T.V. in here. The reason that button is on your remote is because if there  _was_ a T.V. in here, we could sync that remote to it and let patients use the T.V. that way. It's much more convenient to have everything you would need for this room on one remote instead of multiple ones.  

He nodded at her explanation as she left to allow him to eat his miso soup. It wasn't the worst miso soup, but it definitely wasn't the best either. 

He spent probably somewhere around an hour just slowly eating his miso soup. There was no need to rush. Thankfully though, the nurse did come in later before bed to remove the bowl and with her, she brought a gift. 

"I figured it might be lonely in your room, so I brought you this." She said while handing him what she was holding. It was a book, old and worn out, the pages yellowing with time. Even the cover had been eroded with time. 

"Oh, a gift for me?" He smiled at her at he took it from her. "Thanks." 

"You're welcome. If you don't need anything else from me, I'll leave so you can get your sleep. The nurses all go to a separate room that we sleep in. Don't worry, if you press the "Call Nurse" button, it will still call one of us, there will just be nobody at the nurses' station. Well then, have a good night," she said cheerily as she closed the door. 

* * *

He waited for about an hour, the clock told him that it was 10 P.M., before he saw the sliver of light disappear from the crack at the bottom of his door. He waited a few more minutes and heard the sound of the door closing in the distance. From what he had seen today in his tour, that closing sound probably came from the nurses' own private rooms. They were in the hallway directly opposite from the heavy metal door that was in the hall closest to him. So it was a safe bet to assume they had all just went off to bed. Still, he waited about another 20 minutes, waiting to see if the light would turn back on, or if somebody would come into his room. Nothing happened.

Ouma breathed out a sigh of relief and began to repeat the motions that he went through earlier that day. 

He used his hands to maneuver his legs into hanging off the bed. He used his hands to begin to lower his body off the bed and onto the ground. Once his feet touched the ground, he could barely keep himself standing, even with his hands still firmly on the bed behind him supporting most of his weight, his legs too shaky and unreliable to hold him upright. Yet, he knew he would never get anywhere unless he tried, so he shakily lifted up one of his legs and attempted to take a step away from the bed, away from the support... and fell down immediately. With nobody to catch him, unlike last time, his entire body collapsed onto the ground. He huffed as his body hurt a little from the sudden fall, but brought his hands out in front of him, trying to push his body back up and off the floor. And failed pathetically. His entire body was feeling weak now, the only thing it was running off of was miso soup, not exactly something that would give him super strength. 

Trying once more to push himself onto his legs, he collapsed again and thought of the "Call Nurse" button. Did they ever think to consider how useless it would be if he was anywhere in his room  _besides_ the bed? Ouma would never call them though, would never let them know that he was trying to stand on his own. 

At this point, though, he was panting and sweating, and pressing his cheek against the floor in a desperate attempt to cool off. He had used up too much energy and was now stranded on the ground. After he took a few more minutes to cool off and regain some of the strength in his arms, he used his hands to crawl his way back to the bed, using his quickly fleeting strength to pull himself up and onto the bed. 

The clock stared back at him. 

11 P.M.

That entire experience took only about an hour. He threw the blanket over his head and fell asleep. 

The nurses in the morning would be none the wiser to his late night struggles. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

When Ouma awoke the next morning, it was to the nurse standing over him. It took all his willpower not to “accidentally” punch her in the face.

"Good morning!"

His eyes blinked blearily up at her.

"Good morning," he responded.

"It's 8 A.M., that means it's breakfast time. Come on, all your friends are waiting."

After a bit of work, they managed to get him into the wheelchair and she began to push him down the hall towards the dining area.

When she opened the door, his nose was assaulted by the smelly mash of rice and soup. She brought him over to one of the tables where some of the others were gathered and left him there for a moment while she made up his breakfast plate.

If he was remembering their names right, it would appear that the people at the table he was at were Amami, Momota, and Akamatsu.

"'Morning," Momota said in between mouthfuls of rice.

"Good morning," the other two at the table followed, too enthralled in painting their nails to have noticed him had it not been for Momota.

Ouma watched Amami paint her nails methodically until his nurse came over with his food. It was nothing special, just some rice like Momota had paired with a smaller cup of miso than he had last night.

He quickly said his thanks and began to pick at his rice with his chopsticks. He took minimal interest in the food, instead finding it more fun to attempt to pick up individual pieces at a time. He shot a quick glance over at Amami's and Akamatsu's plates to see that they had barely touched their meals either.

"Oh? You're not going to eat more than that? What a waste," he said off handily to the two. He hoped they didn't pick up on the fact that he was barely eating his either.

Amami took a glance down at the rice in front of him.

"I'm not too hungry," he said.

Ouma scowled at him.

"Neither am I, but you don't see me wasting our meal, now do you."

Amami sighed, finished painting the last of Akamatsu's nails, capped the nail polish, and picked up his chopsticks.

"Happy now?" He asked as he shoveled more food into his mouth.

Ouma giggled. "Very. Thanks Amami-chan~"

A grain of rice was promptly flung at his forehead.

* * *

By Ouma's calculations, breakfast lasted for about an hour.

That gave them more than enough time to catch up with each other and allowed them to have a bit of time to just relax before they had to be carted back to their rooms.

Once back in their rooms, they were all given a quick check-up by the doctors and told how far they were into their recovery—which was practically non-existent.

After that, they were allowed to roam anywhere in that wing of the hospital that they wanted (provided they didn't cause any trouble). Of course, the other side of the locked door was still off limits. Ouma was told that lunch was held at 12 P.M. while dinner was held at 6 P.M., so he had some time before lunch.

This meant however, that Ouma had one of two options. He could, one, suck it up and reluctantly rely on nurse fake-chan to cart him around until he could find another to do it for him. Or, two, he could stay in his room and do who knows what until he had to do the next thing he was helplessly made to do.

Or… A thought entered his head and he smiled.

He grabbed the button next to his bed and pressed the "Call Nurse" button. Just once this time. He didn't want to be the boy who called wolf too many times. He'd save those rapid presses for a time when he was really bored and wanted to give her a heart attack.

She entered a minute later. He put on his cutest face.

"Can I get some paper and pen please?" He asked, eyes shining with fake tears, "I'm so lonely and bored here, I want to draw something."

"I can always take you to see your friends if you're that bored," she smiled.

"No, I don't want to see them right now. I want to stay here," he pouted.

"I heard one of your friends is a very talented artist, I'm sure she'd love to draw with you if you asked," the nurse said.

Ouma mentally sighed. This wasn't going as smoothly as he wanted.

"But I just want to stay here," He whined, sniffing. He turned the water works on a bit too, just to drive his point home.

"Oh! Oh no! Don't cry! I'll get you your paper!" She squealed out and ran away.

"Hmph, finally," he mumbled under his breath. Really, what was so hard about just doing what he wanted?

When the nurse came back in, she held a thick stack of papers and some pencils and pens rolling on top of it.

She carefully placed them on the nightstand, making sure nothing flew off. “Here you go!”

“Thanks!” He replied. “But, do you have a clipboard or something? It'd kind of be hard to draw using the covers as a surface.”

“Are you sure you don’t just want to go to the game room to draw with your friends?” She looked at him exasperatedly.

“Yup, I’m one hundred percent sure! But thanks for the offer, Nurse Fa...er- Nurse-chan!”

He could have sworn he heard her mumble something about her name _not_ being “Nurse-chan” as she left, which was an absolutely ridiculous thought to even entertain.

She returned with a clipboard shortly after. “Here, is that better?”

“It’s perfect,” he said, grinning at her.

“Well, if you don’t need anything else, I’ll be leaving now,” she told him. “You know how to get me if you really need anything, or, you know, want to go and hang out with your friends.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, not really wanting to commit to anything.

She closed the door behind him, and he immediately got to work. He took a sheet of paper, put it onto the clipboard, turned it horizontally, and picked up the pencil, then sighed at the regrettably rounded, dull, and unsharpened state of the pencil point.

He started off by drawing a big square, placing a smaller square in the middle and labeling it “Nurse’s Station” and thought for a moment before putting in parenthesis next to it “CPUs.” It was a pretty obvious fact, but something he wanted to write down anyways so he had a good reference of where certain things were in the building. Next, he drew in where the rooms were by bolding in the lines along the square. His room was pretty easy to place, it was facing the hallway that had the locked door. Now that he was thinking about it, he drew a line in for that too, and labeled it with a big question mark and wrote the word “Locked.”

Labeling the other rooms, besides from the dining hall and game room at the end of the hall on either side of the nurses’ station, were pretty hard. He was pretty sure that he remembered a sprite of Kiibo being next to him, but he wasn't sure. In fact, he wasn't sure where a lot of them were specifically. Next time he went out of his room, he'd make a conscious effort to observe and memorize room locations.

Frustrated at not being able to complete the map, he sighed and clipped it back into the clipboard; he placed a few pieces of paper on top of it until the map disappeared. He drew random nonsense on a few pieces of paper and stuck those on the clipboard too. That would increase the chance that people looking at the clipboard would assume they were seeing random doodles. Satisfied, he put the clipboard back on the nightstand and pulled out the new book the nurse had brought.

He passed the day away reading, only leaving his room to go to lunch and dinner which had the same meal as breakfast, just smaller and larger portions, respectfully. Without much else to do, he kept reading until around 9:30 P.M., when the nurse came in to give him his last minute check over before bed.

He waited to hear the door in the distance thud and the lights turn off outside before he did anything.

He pushed himself to his feet like the previous night, and took his hands off the bed. He managed to support his weight for a total of one whole second before he started to collapse again. This time, though, he put his weight backwards so he fell onto the bed instead of the floor.

And, now, again. He repeated the process the whole night until he managed to stand in one place for 5 seconds before he began to collapse. His calves throbbed under his skin and his legs felt sore and as if somebody had inserted a heavy block of led into them.

He was so tired he didn't see that the clock said it was 12 A.M. before he pulled the covers over his head and passed out.

* * *

In the morning, he instructed the nurse to bring him to the game room before heading to breakfast.

“What are you looking for?” She asked.

Ouma kept rummaging through the cabinet as she talked to him. “Chess board and pieces.”

“Oh, do you like chess?”

He didn't bother to grace her with an answer.

He smiled as he found the chess set and pulled it out.

* * *

He was hoping that there was somebody, _anybody,_ would be able to give him a challenge. Momota wasn’t too bad at chess, all things considered, but he wasn’t anywhere near Ouma’s level of playing. This was the second time they had played this morning, and it was also the second time that Ouma won.

“Checkmate,” he said, sighing as he placed his queen down. “Man Momota-chan, if I knew you were this bad at the game, I never would have brought it to play.”

“Shut up,” Momota grumbled as he scowled at Ouma.

Momota analyzed the board for a minute, checking to make sure what Ouma had claimed was correct. With a sigh, he reached over to where his king was, chased all the way to the far right corner of the board, but Ouma beat him to the chase, placing his index finger on the king’s crown, tipping it back and forth.

“Say it,” he said.

“Say what?” Momota asked.

“Say, I’m better at chess than you, of course,” Ouma said.

“Ha! In your dreams, asshole,” Momota huffed out. “These are just my warm up games.”

“Uh huh,” Ouma said and tipped the king over before quickly rearranging the board back to neutral.

“Go,” he said and jerked his head towards Momota.

He lifted up one of his pawns and moved it two spaces forward. Ouma smiled and moved his knight. Oh, how much fun.

* * *

In the remaining time at breakfast, Ouma managed to beat Momota another 3 times.

“What the hell, are you a grandmaster chess player or something?” Amami asked as he peered at the board. After the third total time Ouma had beaten Momota, he’d taken to watching their games in silence as he analyzed Ouma’s moves.

“Maybe,” Ouma gave a small laugh as he moved his bishop a square across. “Also, you’re in checkmate again Momota-chan.”

The table bounced with the force of Momota slamming his hands into it.

“God damnit!” He yelled.

A few people turned their heads towards the table to see what the commotion was about.

Momota didn’t even bother to check the board over this time, too tired of this game to care about confirming Ouma’s conclusion. Before Ouma could try to tip his king over for him, Momota spoke.

“You’re honestly pretty good at chess, aren’t you?” He said with a small smile gracing his lips.

Ouma mimicked his face without saying a word, watching as Momota was finally allowed to tip his own king over for the first time since they’d started playing. The king fell with a delicate thud and Ouma watched it with distant eyes as it rolled around for a few seconds in a circle before coming to a stop.

He didn’t feel like playing anymore chess today.  

* * *

Nothing that followed was worth his time. He, again, didn’t go and hang out with his friends, too invested in the drawings he was doing. The book the nurse gave him was pretty good as well. He managed to read it in about 4 hours. The ending was nothing short of a heart tug as the man shot his best friend. _Oh well,_ he thought as he snapped it shut.

He slammed his head down onto the pillow as a headache began to creep up on him.

* * *

The night found him staring into the cold, dark nothingness of his room.

In the silent numbness, he heard a quiet click, and numbly laid down on the bed and turned the light off. He didn’t want the nurses to find him like this, but at the same time he was too busy trying to ground himself as his mind floated between a permanent feeling of life and death to really care. It was unexplainable, why he was feeling this way, and searching for the answer in his mind was like being submerged in pitch black darkness.

The heaviness on his chest returned, slowly and painfully crushing him, until he finally passed out, being able to breathe no longer.

* * *

The next day found him waking up even more tired than normal.

“Didn’t sleep well?” The nurse asked as she helped him into the wheelchair.

“I slept fine, why?”

She hummed in response. He was lying. His never ending sleepiness now felt conspicuously abnormal. God damnit! What was going on?

* * *

Breakfast passed by without anything major happening. At most, the best thing that happened was watching Amami and Kaede have a freak attack when one of Amami’s nail polish bottles tipped over. He didn’t mean to “accidently” hit the table really hard with his wheelchair arms, honest.

* * *

“I read that book you gave me,” he whined to the nurse as she went through the boring motions of his daily check-up.

“Did you like it? It’s a classic! There’s so much symbolism in there,” nurse fake-chan swooned. “Oh, and that big oaf is so stupid most times, but you just can’t help but love him.”

She took the book away and promised to bring him another book later.

* * *

Monotone days passed him by.

* * *

Every night at 10 P.M. he worked on his legs. After several nights of self-directed physical therapy, he was able to walk around in his room without collapsing and with little to no pain.

It was hard to trust in his legs, to trust that the strength there would remain and not be lost to him in a flash, but he had no choice. Once he knew he was about to be ready, he turned off the light in his room. And, so, for the first time since his stay in the hospital, he stepped foot into the hallway.

He knew they didn’t lock his door at night like they did for some of the others. There was no need. In their eyes, he couldn’t even move himself in his wheelchair.

The hallway was dark and he had to strain his eyes to make out the nurse’s station in the middle. From his room, he cautiously made his way to the locked door. The door was tight fitting, and hardly even had a crack at the bottom of the door. The only way he could tell there was a crack at all was from the small slit of light peeking through under the door. He didn’t think anything could fit under something that small, except, maybe… He’d have to test that theory later.

There was no way to tell what was happening on the other side of the door, but his curiosity got the best of him. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he reached for the handle and gently tried to open it. The handle was hard and barely budged when he tried it.

Now that he had the chance to be closer to the door, he was able to really examine it. The handle had a keyhole in it, meaning it could be opened from this side. However, he’d never seen any of the nurses go through the door. He stared at the handle, unsure of why he was feeling the onset of a headache from just looking at it. There was nothing else really to observe about the door other than that and had to look away in a futile attempt to stop the growing pain in his head. So, as much as he hated to do so, he left the door for now. It was a mystery he would certainly have to solve, but for right now there was hardly anything he could do about it. Standing there for any longer tonight would be a waste of his quickly depleting precious energy.

As he was heading back to his room, he looked to the room next to his, swearing that it was Kiibo, but was confused when he found out it was Hoshi. His headache increased by a tenfold.

He retreated to his room, wrote down Hoshi’s name in the map as the room next to his, and fell swiftly into slumber.    

* * *

Breakfast was rice and soup again. He found out that it was _always_ rice and soup. As he watched Amami and Kaede slowly pick at their rice, he couldn’t help but feel the same. Even Momota, who normally ate his breakfast in record time, was looking a little fatigued.

He wished for something other than rice and soup for once. His hands shook throughout the day and it seemed like sleep was the only way he was replenishing his energy.

* * *

Once back to his room after breakfast, he passed out the moment the nurse left the room. He was too tired, too many nights of staying up for hours past what they considered bedtime to be considered healthy for him. His body felt weak, and he wasn’t getting enough food. Or maybe it was the wrong kind of food? He’d thought about reading the book once he got back to his room, but his mind was crying for relief, not more work. So, with nothing left to do, he passed out.

* * *

The next time he woke up, it was to a certain green haired teen standing over him.

“Tired?” He smirked at Ouma.

“I was just resting my eyes, duh.”

Amami chuckled. “Mhm.”

“As much as I love having you in my room, why are you here Amami-chan?”

“Hey, Ouma-kun, do you think we’ll ever get out?”

“...Of course.”

* * *

Against his will, his nurse wheeled him into the game room to spend some time with his friends.

“Oh, but you’ve been more shut up in here than a prisoner hiding from the police,” she joked with him as she picked up a squirming Ouma and placed him into the wheelchair. He had to make a conscious effort to not kick her in his struggle to break free. The strength in which he would have been able to kick her wouldn’t have matched up to the weak legs he was supposed to have; she might seem like an unobservant ditz to others, but he wasn’t so easily fooled. He could see a sharp gleam in her eyes as she observed him. “Plus, you totally said you’d come here.”

“I said _maybe._ ”

His words seemed to not matter to her.“Now have fun!” She said and closed the door behind him.

Amami laughed at his red face from the corner he was sitting in, playing poker with a few other people.

“Welcome to the game room,” a happy voice said from his side and he whipped his head around to glare at them.

“Oh, sorry dear, didn’t mean to frighten you!” Oh great, it was another one of those fucking nurses. Even worse, it wasn’t _his_ nurse, so he had no idea what kind of attitude this one would have.

    “Is there any specific game you want to play?” She asked as she bent crouched down so she was level with him. “We have some monopoly, and some sudoku, and, oh, I heard you’re a fan of chess…”

“Wow, those games all sound great and all, buttttt, isn’t there something a little bit more interesting to play? Like some video games?”

She huffed. “Video games aren’t good for you. They corrupt your mind. Here, why don’t you play monopoly with the rest of your friends.”

Didn’t anybody ever teach this nurse that nobody ever walked out of monopoly with their friendships still intact? _That should be a disclaimer,_ he mused to himself. Regardless, he played it just to please her. Surprisingly, no tables were smashed at the end of their game, so he counted that as a win.

* * *

Amami was in his room again, sitting on the edge of his bed. “What do you think we all even are to each other?”

“Comrades in this fucked up place.”

Amami hummed in response.

“Are you just going to stay here all day and ponder the meaning of our existence here, Amami-chan?”

“I don’t think you were planning on doing anything today, were you?”

Ouma grinned at him. “I _always_ have something I’m planning on doing.”

He grabbed his pen and doodled a drawing of a field of grass with the moon in the sky and stars surrounding it. He drew nothing on the moon, except for a small crater in the top left corner right before the moon would be upwards again.  

At the top of the page, he wrote “Hello, Beautiful World” bolding the two l’s, emphasizing their importance, and capped the pen.

Perfect.

* * *

When it was 10:30 P.M., he turned his light off. He grabbed the piece of paper he had been drawing on earlier and stuffed it into his pants pockets. He was once more ready to go out to the hall. Just as he was reaching for the knob, however, it slowly turned and the door opened on its own.

Ouma felt terror running through him, thinking one of the nurses had finally found him out. They would know he was better and that he was lying about needing the wheelchair. Worst of all, they might lock his door at night.

“Huh, I figured you were still up.”

That voice, Ouma realized, was not one of the nurses.

“Amami-chan?”

Amami stepped into his room, glancing around.

“What are you still doing up, Ouma-kun?”

“Nothing special. Why are you still up?”

“Because I knew you were still up and I had to come and check on you. You're up to no good, aren't you?”

“Oh, and what were you going to go if I wasn't still up, Amami-chan? Were you planning on just watching me sleep like a creep? This is the first night I've been up past ten, you know. I wonder if you've been coming into my room and watching me for a while, Amami-chan.”

Amami scowled at him. “You're lying. This is most definitely not the first time you've been up past ten.”

“Oh? And what makes you say that?”

“The bags under your eyes.”

“...”

“Why can't you just tell the truth? What are you doing up every night past ten? And why are you standing? Aren't you supposed to be, like, not able to walk?”

He wanted to trust Amami, he really did, but…

“I was just...heading towards the bathroom. You’re not going to try to stop me from going to the bathroom, now are you Amami-chan?”

“Your bathroom is in your room, not the hall. Can't you be serious for one minute?”

He wished that Amami wasn't so smart. It seems he had a brain after all.

“It's none of your business, Amami-chan, just leave what I'm doing to me, and go back to bed.”

“For somebody who is so enraptured in finding the truth, you sure lie a lot.”

“...I've never said anything about finding the truth.”

“Go to sleep, Ouma-kun. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Or do whatever you want, once I leave this room, I can't stop anything you plan on doing.”

“You never could in the first place.”

Amami smiled sadly at him.

* * *

8 A.M. found him with Amami in his room, smearing makeup under his eyes in an attempt to conceal the darkening circles under his eyes.

“You do know that if a nurse came in, we’d totally be in trouble, right?” Ouma whispered to him, glancing at the door periodically.

Amami smiled. “For what, having you be a test subject for me to put makeup on? Plus, I'm almost done anyway, they won't know what we were trying to hide if they walk in now.”

“Where did you even get this stuff in the first place?” Ouma laughed out.

Amami continued to smear and gently rub the makeup around under his eye. “Shirogane-chan had a lot of makeup. She just asked for some pretty basic stuff and the nurses went crazy and bought her every kind of makeup product under the sun. She told me the other day that they like to try new makeup techniques with her sometimes. Apparently, they're obsessed with doing their hair and make-up at any given moment. I actually kind of feel bad for Shirogane-chan.”

“So you just stole it? How rude of you, Amami-chan.”

“I didn't steal it, I just asked for it and she was more than happy to give it to me. I think she believes that if she runs out of make-up they'll stop using her as a model for crazy things they want to try. Pretty sure she hates the nurses.”  

“She does realize they’ll probably just buy her way more, right?”

Amami laughed and stepped back from Ouma. “There, done. I didn't hide them all the way, that'd be weird if you just showed up without any bags after just one night.”

“Thanks, Amami-chan.”

He hummed and lifted Ouma into his wheelchair and rolled him out.

* * *

Soup and rice. Desperation and exhaustion. If only the make-up hiding the bags under his eyes could make him feel the same as he looked.

* * *

The “He **ll** o, Beautiful World” picture felt heavy in his pocket the whole rest of the day once he realized he forgot to take it out of his pocket from last night. He shoved it deeper into his pocket and returned it to his room at the soonest possible moment.

* * *

10 P.M. came and he left the light off, hoping Amami wouldn't even show up tonight to check on him. He laid down, pretended he was asleep just, and soon enough he heard the door open.

He heard footsteps in his room, getting closer to his bed until he could feel a figure looming over him. It only stayed there for a minute, but he felt the pressure from the figure, as if it was daring him to show that he was awake; that he was a liar.

It seems Amami didn't intend to do more than check because he walked back over to the door and closed it as he left.

In the clear, Ouma rose from the bed and tried to get out of bed before meeting somebody’s eyes. It was dark, and hard to see in his room, but he could make out the blaring green of Amami’s eyes and hair, the rest of him was nothing more than a darkened blob melting into the nothingness.

“Oh, was that you who just closed that door? You woke me up.”

Amami’s eyes became dark as he heard the lie. “Yeah, of course you _just_ woke up.”

“It’s true!” Ouma whined.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t tell on you,” Amami said. “You do know you risk getting us all in trouble, right?”

“And that’s exactly why you won’t tell them. It’s mutually assured destruction! Not just for you and I, but for everyone here.”

“...Fine, but at least, why are _you_ up Ouma.”

“You say that like _you_ have a reason to be up too. Plus, there’s not exactly a rule or anything about being up past ten P.M., it’s just something everybody kind of just did on their own.”

“That might be true, but you never did explain to me the other day why you’re able to stand. But, if you really want to know why I’m up, you have to tell me why you’re up too,” Amami shot back.  

“Hmmm, depends. Do you really want to know? If I tell you, something bad might happen to you.”

“Eh,” Amami said, uncaring towards Ouma’s threats. “I’ve been investigating the hospital a bit without the nurses watching us. Especially the door, which I know for a fact you’ve been investigating too.”  

Ouma squinted at him. Was he telling the truth? Was he lying to get the truth out of Ouma? He weighed his options, his pros and cons.

Telling Amami, if he wasn’t lying, could help him immensely. If Amami was lying, and he was just going to rat him out in the end, it could break him here at the hospital. He’d never be left alone again by those nurses. So, that’s why, even though his back was against the wall, he found himself hesitating to trust Amami.

Amami must have seen the way his eyes were blank, staring into the dark as he thought up calculations and scenarios as quickly as he could. “It’s not easy for me to trust you enough for me to tell you this either.”

“Why are you so desperate for me to trust you?” Ouma whispered. “Do I have to remind you that we don’t know each other? We’re not friends, got it?”

Rantaro looked at him with the blankets face he had ever seen before sighing and leaving Ouma’s for real this time.

Arguing with Amami made him more tired than he expected, but he dragged himself out of bed and into the hallway. It seems that Amami must have gone back to his room because he wasn't standing in the hallway, waiting for Ouma.

He, brought the paper from out of his pocket and looked at it. He could barely make the words out it was so dark in the hall. The only light came from the small slit on the floor from the door, but even that did not spread far. He walked over to the door, smoothed the paper out, and slid it under the door.

From there, he waited for a moment, nervous at the thought of being caught, but too curious to abandon his mission. He heard nothing, no noise of the paper being picked up, no talking, no shadow as somebody stepped in front of the light of the door. It was if there was no life. Ouma only retreated to his room when he realized he’s been standing for too long by how his legs started to wobble under him.

He fell asleep to the beginnings of a headache and darkness swirling behind his eyes. The bed felt soft under him, and he fell asleep in a heartbeat.

* * *

The next morning Amami came to his room as if the previous night’s conversation had never occured. He sighed when he saw how the shadows under Ouma’s eyes hadn’t gotten better and got to work. The room was tense with silence as Amami worked on his face, the air that had once been there between the two now too diluted to touch. Maybe last night was a mistake, maybe he should have just listened to Amami and not stayed up. Maybe he should have trusted Amami instead of burning whatever trust they had between them to ashes.

Amami pulled back, looking at his work from a distance, and nodded.

“Alright,” he said as he pulled the wheelchair over to Ouma’s bedside. “You’re all set. Get in the wheelchair and let’s go.”

“What, you’re not going to pick me up and carry me into it like some bride?” Ouma got up anyway and rushed to sit back down. He was a bit too desperate to take his mind off of everything by filling the void with the same plain and boring food he had grown to detest during his stay.

Amami pushed him out of the room and started to steer him forward before freezing and jerking Ouma around to the right and pushing him down the correct hallway. The nurses, as always, hadn’t noticed a thing, too enthralled in doing up their hair and looking in the mirror to give much mind to Amami’s little mistake.

“Hey, what gives!” He whispered harshly, craning his neck up to glare at Amami. That kind of hurt when he did it for too long.

Amami’s gaze was lost into space as he stared at the metal door. “Nothing. Sorry about that, I thought the dining hall was that way for some reason.”

“What could have possibly given you the idea that the dining hall was that way. It’s been on the right hall of my room since we got here. It didn’t magically switch positions.”

Amami’s gaze still looked troubled as he finally looked forward.

“Hey, are you sure you’re like, alright?”

Amami bit his lip a bit, looking down at Ouma. “I guess you could say I haven’t been feeling too well lately. I’ve been getting a lot of headaches lately…”

They finally reached the dining hall and Amami opened the door as Ouma continued to talk to him. “Ugh, as much as I hate them...have you tried talking to those shitty nurses yet? It wouldn’t be too hard to just have them throw some headache pills at you, would it be?”

Amami rolled him up to their normal table as he sighed. “I guess not.”

Momota and Akamatsu were already there, picking at their meals. Amami sat down across from Akamatsu as always and Ouma noticed that their breakfasts had already been laid out for them.

“Morning!” Akamatsu said, smiling at them. To her side Momota hummed in agreement as he pushed his food around. “I got both of your breakfasts for you so you guys don’t have to wait for it when you get here.”

Ouma picked up his spoon and took a sip of his miso soup and almost immediately spit it out. “Disgusting! It’s cold! Why couldn’t you have just waited until we were here to get it?” He whined to her.

“Oh shut up,” Momota said, finally just putting his chopsticks down. “You act as if you were going to eat this shit in the first place.”

The table shared a tense silence, not unlike the one earlier, before Ouma could hold it in no more. He started to laugh, just a bit at first, but then it grew, until the whole table was in an uproar over something that probably shouldn’t have been that funny in the first place.

The rest of the patients looked at them as if they had lost their minds, which might not be too bad of a thing at this point. Maybe they should all just lose their minds, maybe they already lost their mind. Ouma figured it was okay if that was the case. Maybe if he lost his mind he would able to finally stop thinking, and maybe that stupid pain on his chest would stay away instead of coming back every time he got too stressed or tired.

But then, if he accepted losing his mind, does that mean he’s content here? Does he truly accept not knowing? Does he cast all of doubts away to know nothing and not worry? Suddenly the joke wasn’t as funny to him anymore, and he began to come down from his laughing high as the others did the same. Ouma picked up the chopsticks and shoved the cooling rice into his mouth.

“Eat,” he mumbled, glaring at everybody at the table. They all mumbled and groaned at him, but picked up their utensils nonetheless and started to eat their meals. For the first time since he’d been there, Ouma managed to finish at least the rice. The soup seemed cold and ugly and went untouched.

Amami wheeled him back off to his room after breakfast. As soon as Amami made sure that Ouma was all good he promptly left the room. The tension between them seemed to have been cleared up a bit after breakfast, but Ouma could see that the one thing that hadn’t disappeared was the taller boy’s headache. His brows furrowed in a small show of pain and he rubbed at his forehead as if he could somehow massage his brain through his skull. Ouma hoped he actually went to one of the nurses for that. It would do him no good to have his now self-appointed makeup artist and keeper of late night secrets to be in too much pain to think.

Maybe he should take his own advice and ask the nurses for some meds too. He’d been having too many headaches lately to be considered normal. Not only that, but they bugged him to no end and for seemingly no reason at all.

Ouma yawned, feeling his vision blur in front of him. He did nothing to stop himself from drifting off into the land of dreams. He, as always, had a big night ahead of him.      

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!  
> I don't know if I liked this chapter as much as the first one but eh  
> Also you can pry the headcanon that Ouma is good at chess out of my cold, dead fingers. Ever since I saw a comic about it a while back I've been in love with that headcanon  
> As always, constructive criticism is appreciated!  
> Have a great day!!


	3. Chapter 3

When Ouma awoke again, Amami was standing to his side, gently shaking him awake.

“C’mon, get up, we have to get to lunch,” he said, stepping away from the bed so that Ouma could get into his wheelchair.

Ouma mumbled as he slowly woke up, yawning as he sat down in the wheelchair.

“Why don’t you just let my nurse come and get me for lunch, Amami-chan?” He asked, rubbing his eyes carefully so as to not smear the makeup. Luckily, Ouma had stayed pretty still when he had been sleeping, so he didn’t have to worry about cleaning up any makeup smears on his pillow.

“I told your nurse that I would come and get you for mealtimes. I figured you didn’t want her to be the one waking you up multiple times throughout the day.”

“Wow, you know me so well already, Amami-chan.”

He almost wished Amami didn’t come and get him and let him starve through at least lunch. There was hardly any point in showing up to lunch. Everybody else was there, though, so he supposed he had no choice but to keep showing up.

He noticed that Amami had stopped rubbing his head as often too. He still did it, but it was nowhere near the amount he had been doing it earlier. Just what had made his headache go away so quickly?

* * *

When lunch was done, Amami wheeled him back to his room.

Before Amami could leave however, Ouma spoke up. “Hey, Amami-chan! You should totally come to my room after dinner with the chess set and we can play a few games. Do you think you can do better than Momota-chan?”

Amami smirked at him. “You’re on.”

* * *

In the time period between when lunch ended and dinner began, Ouma found himself reading the book. There was nothing in particular for him to do until later that night anyway, so he might as well pass the time somehow. Finishing his map was a no-go as he still didn’t know the girl’s side of the map at all. He’d managed to fill out the rest of the boy’s side though after today, but asking Amami to wheel him down the girl’s side of the hall would seem a little weird to the nurses; if they could bring their heads out of their own gossiping asses for two seconds to look around them that is.

About half-way through the book, his nurse peeked her head in, only bothering to quickly knock before inviting herself in, smiling upon seeing him sitting up in bed.

“Oh, perfect, you’re up!” She remarked.

“Oh, perfect, you’re here,” he mumbled, mimicking her tone under his breath.

“Huh? What was that? I couldn’t hear you, sorry,” she replied.

“Oh I said, ‘Oh, perfect, you’re here,’ because you know how happy I am to always see you!” He beamed at her.

“Your face didn’t look too happy when you said it the first time, though,” she pouted.

He offered no other apologies other than a simple, “Sorry.”

“Well, anyway, I came to tell you that you’re going to be having a check-up! Isn’t that great?! Now, we need you to be honest about everything, okay? We can’t help you get better until we know what’s wrong with you!” She chirped out.

“But, I’m feeling just fine, Nurse-chan! There’s no need for a check-up.” On the inside, Ouma was sweating. He wasn’t afraid of them finding out about anything _worse_ with his body, he was worried about them finding out about things that were _better._

“We still have to make sure! What kind of hospital would we be if we didn’t make sure our patients were being taken care of well?” She puffed out her cheeks, looking slightly more insulted then she probably should be at Ouma’s comment.

Ouma bit his lip, knowing that if he tried to refute her further, it might cause suspicion. He’d been given a check-up before here, but that was before his clandestine self-rehabilitation.

“Well, I’m going to go grab the doctor now, okay? Just sit tight,” she giggled, “not like you can do much else anyway.”

Did she just mock his inability to walk? He didn’t know whether to rise to the challenge or her taunt or not, so he just watched in silence as she left the room. In any event, he could walk and the irony was not lost on Ouma.

It didn’t take long for the doctor to come in. She was different from the one he’d had last time, but she was wearing the same generic type of clothing that all doctors wore, and was caring a small kit with her. Her face was young, but Ouma could see small strands of grey hair speckled inside of her jet-black hair. Behind her, his nurse came in, wheeling in a blood pressure machine and a stool on wheels with her.

“Hello, Ouma Kokichi-san,” oh thank God that her voice wasn’t as annoying as his nurse’s was, “my name is Doctor Aria, how are you today?”

“I’m good, thanks, how are you?” He replied, not hesitating at all.

“Good, good,” she replied, shooting the nurse a thankful nod as she sat down on the stool She wheeled herself closer to Ouma’s bed, placing her kit on Ouma’s nightstand. The clipboard went ignored by the doctor, seeing the crude and childish drawing facing her drew no interest in her towards the rest of its contents. Ouma smiled inwardly, happy his crude version of camouflage was just clever enough to fool a smart doctor.

She opened her kit and pulled out a small clipboard of her own with a sheet already attached to it. From what Ouma could see of it, it just looked like pretty usual doctor note things, so he wasn’t too concerned about what he was going to be asked today. As long as he kept his head and responded cooly, maybe they wouldn’t even be bothered to check his legs. In the end, though, it all came down to how much this “doctor” actually cared. Was she just like the nurses who goofed off all day and provided minimal help, or was she somebody who did her job with at least a bit more effort?

“Before we do anything else, I’d just like to take your blood pressure, okay?” She didn’t care what his response would be, holding her hand out expectantly for his arm while the nurse frantically finished setting up the blood pressure machine.

He lifted his arm up and placed it into her waiting hand, not liking the rough way she squeezed it in her grip for a moment before she loosened it up again. His nurse placed the cuff around his upper arm before using the velcro to close it. The doctor let his hand go back into his lap, telling him to relax his arm. He nodded and the nurse pressed the button to turn on the machine. He watched as slowly, the cuff expanded, creating more pressure around his arm, more and more pressure, the pressure he always vaguely felt on him was getting heavier, it was slowly hurting his arm, _crushing it as he could do nothing but just lay there_ … he bit down on his tongue hard to keep from crying out as the pressure became too great around his arm before, finally, there was another beep and the cuff deflated. He could feel his pulse pumping hard under his skin, and he focused on keeping his breathing steady. He prayed to whatever holy being there was up there that he didn’t just botch the results. He prayed that they wouldn’t have to do _that_ again.

The doctor seemed satisfied with the results as she scribbled down the numbers from the machine onto her chart as the nurse removed the cuff from around his arm.

“Well, at least your blood pressure is looking great,” she said, smiling down into her sheet as she scanned it for what she wanted to ask him next. “Ah, what about your legs? Can I see those?” She asked him, again not really expecting authorization for the examination; she lifted the blanket up and folded it over his torso, exposing his legs.

She picked up his right leg and began to feel it, massaging her fingers into it as she felt for damage.

“Hmmm,” she furrowed her brows as she placed down his right leg and exchanging it for his left one and repeating her process. “Do you use that wheelchair over there?”

Was she _stupid_?! “Well, I can’t exactly walk, so I use that and have somebody push me around.”

“Hmm, I agree, you can’t walk. Your leg muscles are way too weak for that. Your legs were probably damaged badly in the accident.”

“Will I ever be able to walk again?” He asked, letting crocodile tear begin to pool at the bottom of his eyes, but being careful not to let them run.

“It’s hard to say, but if I had to take a guess, I’d say no, not for a very long time at least.”

“Oh…” he said, casting his face downwards, letting his mouth wobble a bit.

“I’m sorry,” she said, placing her hand on his back and rubbing it.  

“It’s okay,” he sighed out, lifting his face back up with a smile. “I know that as long as I’m here, I’ll have only the best care. I trust that I can depend on both of you to help me get better!”

He spotted his nurse in the corner of his eye nervously fiddling with the machine, biting her lip. Meanwhile, the doctor in front of him smiled back at him with a subtle look of pity in her eyes.

“That’s right, we’re going to be here for you and help you get better. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”

She patted his back a few times before pulling her hand away and looking back at the sheet she held. Again, she scribbled down some information on it before looking back up at him.

“Has anything else been hurting you? Any nausea, vomiting, dizziness, dissociation, headaches, or anything else of concern?”

He immediately had a flashback to the conversation he’d had earlier with Amami.  The horrible headaches and the thought of telling the nurses about the headaches. Suddenly, faced head-on with telling somebody, he wasn’t so sure if it was a good idea anymore. On one hand, if something _was_ wrong with him and he told them he felt fine, it could lead to greater health issues later on. On the other hand, if he told them, they could take to giving him check-ups more frequently or to monitoring him more closely to make sure that nothing happened to him.

“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p.’

“Good, I’m glad to hear that!” She said, scribbling it down on her paper. “Okay, one last question and then we’re all set. Have you been eating all of your soup and rice at mealtimes?”

“Well, nobody can eat _all_ of something! It’d be impossible unless you stuck your face onto the dish and licked it clean!” He said, deflecting the question.

The doctor gave a small chuckle as she scribbled something down on her paper.

“Thank you very much for your cooperation Ouma-san. Based on your answers I don’t think we’ll be needing to give you any medications, but I’m going to have a blood test run on you regardless just to be safe. I’ll be back if the results come back worrying. If something else changes though, let your nurse know immediately. I’m looking forward to seeing you for your next check-up too.” After she said that, she promptly stuffed the clipboard back into her kit, closed it, stood up, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“She’s a very good doctor, isn’t she,” his nurse remarked as she too walked over the door and pushed the blood pressure machine out with her. She came back in quickly with the materials that they need to draw his blood and the nurse took a seat on the stool that the doctor had left behind. She went through all the motions of preparing him to get his blood drawn before sticking the needle in him. He watched numbly as the blood slowly drained into the little container, and with each drop of blood he felt his headache return.

“You don’t have to watch you know,” she said, and Ouma took that as his cue to look away.

He’d ask Amami later about bumming some pills off of him.

* * *

“No, you can _not_ bum pills off of me. What are you, crazy?”

Well, there goes that idea. “Well, what am I supposed to do, say, ‘yeah, sorry, I kind of lied to you about not getting headaches, can I get some pills now?’”

“Yes. You can say exactly that,” Amami said in disbelief. They were currently having dinner, and Amami had been instructed to make sure he ate all of his soup and rice before taking the pills with some water. The pill bottle, previously hidden in Amami’s pocket, was now in his hand as he tried to shake just one pill out. It was a bad decision on his part to let Ouma know he had them in his possession. “Plus, I thought you were going to tell them that you had headache issues too.”

“I thought about it. Didn’t want to go through all the extra trouble of having them ask more questions.”

“Well then, that’s your problem.”

“C’mon, I doubt they’d even know that you were giving some to me.”

“I’m sure they’d know once I ran out of pills twice as fast as I should,” Amami countered.

“You could say you dropped the-”

“Jeez, he’s not going to give you any pills, dude,” Momota remarked, finally too tired of seeing Ouma badger Amami any longer. “He’s right, you should have just told the doctor when you had the chance.”

“You guys are no fun.”

* * *

Amami and Ouma ended up playing a few games of chess after dinner. In truth, Ouma was just looking for some way to pass the time until 10 P.M. Amami faired better than Momota had when it came to playing chess, but still struggled to get anywhere close to beating Ouma. Halfway through one of their games, they’d become distracted by the book that was laying in Ouma’s lap. Ouma handed Amami the book so that he could inspect it. Amami flipped through the pages, stopping at the middle and reading a few passages before sighing in defeat as he didn’t recognize the book and flipped back to the beginning to read from there. Seeing as how they weren’t going to be playing chess anymore, Ouma gathered up all the pieces and placed them in their little drawstring bag. He lowered the chess set onto the floor, refusing Amami’s advances to take it back to the game room for him.

Soon enough, 10 P.M. came and Ouma told Amami to leave his room.

“Fine, fine,” Amami laughed as he was shoo’d out by Ouma. “See you in the morning.”

He listened to Amami casually walk to his room at the end of the hall, clearly in no rush to get to his bed anytime soon.

He heard Amami’s door shut in the distance followed by the lights going out and the nurse’s door shutting as well. They should all be tucked into their room now, but he didn’t have to worry about getting up just yet. In fact, he didn’t even bother to turn off his lights. He did, however, get up and open his door a crack before rushing back to his bed. From the view he had in his bed, he could just barely see the metal door, but the view he had was enough. He pulled out his book and opened it to a random page, not really caring about the book. He was more interested in watching the door. If somebody saw him with his lights still on, the perfect excuse would be to say he was just doing some late night reading before sleeping.

The minutes passed slowly and Ouma had to remind himself not to look at the clock every other second to see if it was 11 P.M. yet. He sighed before figuring that he might as well read the book a bit, if only to prevent himself from losing his mind while waiting. After about 45 pages, he looked at the clock again, only to see that it was 10:55 P.M. Deciding that it would be a bad idea to get distracted by the book any longer, he drew his attention back to the door, still keeping the book open, just in case. And he waited, and waited, and waited, and soon enough it was 11 P.M., but still nothing… So he waited some more, but before he knew it the clock’s digital lights blared back at him that it was  12 A.M. and he knew if anything was to happen, it would have occurred by now. He closed his door, turn off his lights, went to bed, and pondered he events of the day before he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

His mornings became monotonous and the makeup became caked on heavier. He consistently stayed up until 12 A.M. each night now, staring at the door in the hall. It was boring, but he was too cautious to just let it be.

He’d only gone out of his room once that entire week, and that was to finally finish his map. He even managed to get the girl’s side, which meant he at least, finally, had a decent understanding of where everyone was. At some point, he would inspect the nurse’s station.

One morning, during their normal morning makeup session, he noticed Amami yawned and seemed hazier than before. When asked if _he_ had been staying up late, he claimed that he'd never stayed up late a day after he started taking the pills.

Ouma decided it was probably a good thing he hadn't gotten any in the end.

* * *

Eventually, Ouma asked his nurse to supply additional  paper, which she begrudgingly did. His room had become something of a known problem for the nurses at this point. He had games strewn around the room from when Amami brought over games to play and papers littered the floor. Of course, none of them were the map, but he'd taken up a habit of doodling multiple times throughout his day. Sometimes it was of bunnies and sunshine and rainbows, and other times it was of arrows soaring through hearts and vicious dogs and simplified bears. Really, whatever came to his mind. So it wasn't exactly a room that people were excited to enter.

“...more paper,” the nurse said, making a disgusted face as she kicked some stray papers out of her path.

He took the block of blank papers from her and let them all fall with a loud thud on the nightstand.

“Wow, thanks~” he purred at her. “Now...” he shooed the nurse away with a flicking motion of his hand.  

* * *

He found that he was losing time here. It was getting harder for him to keep track of how many days had passed in his head. He had no access to his cellphone, in fact he had no idea where it even went, and there wasn't any kind of calendar that he could see. He bet the nurses had a calendar on their computer, but he doubted they would be inclined to show him it.

He reached for one of the papers and put 8 tally marks, one for each day since he'd sent the paper under the door to hear nothing back. That was fine.

He hoped the tally marks didn't drive him insane.

* * *

“Nurse-chan! Hey, Nurse-chan!” He laughed at her as her head jerked up in surprise from where she was fiddling with his wheelchair.

“Huh? What's wrong Ouma-san?” She asked.

“Does anybody know we’re here? Has any of our families tried to visit us? Do they know we're okay?”

She fiddled with her apron for a second before refocusing her attention on the wheelchair. “Your families know you're safe. They...just can't come and visit you right now,” she said, looking oddly downtrodden before smiling. “Plus, you've got all the family you could ever want right here with your friends!”

“Aw, how cute!”

That was okay, he had a feeling deep down that he didn't have a family that would come and visit him in the first place.

* * *

9 tallies. Rice, miso soup, game play. Today after dinner he went to the game room and played with Hoshi, who was a stark contrast to his own personality. The game room had a small ping pong table set up in the corner and they were instructed by the nurses that as long as they played gently they would be allowed to play. While Hoshi had no quarrels about playing gently, he did look quite disgruntled and fed up when the nurses mixed into the game and tried to show him how to play. Ouma had to hand it to him for keeping his calm while his ears got an unwilling front seat ticket to the nurse’s irritating, grating voice.

Playing ping pong with Hoshi was like playing a game against a brick wall; he could have done anything to that ball and he would expect it to bounce back.

“You're pretty good at this,” Ouma remarked, hitting the ball with a bit more force. Hoshi returned the ball with a gentle ease.

“It feels...similar to something. I've never played ping pong before, but it does feel as if I have played something similar…” Hoshi said as he stared down at the paddle in his hands.

Their game of ping pong came to an end when Ouma accidently let go of his paddle on a swing and it flew into the back of Momota’s head.

* * *

On the night of the eleventh tally mark, Ouma stepped foot outside at night again. Today’s goal was another risky one, but he supposed that everytime he went out at night he was making a risky move. He made his way to the nurse’s station and stepped behind the counter. The computers were off and he fingered the power button for a second before deciding against turning it on at that moment.

He opened the top desk drawer carefully, taking care to prevent anything from spilling out. Moving things around carefully _—_ the papers were stacked neatly _—_ Ouma looked through the drawer. It was hard to see in the dark, so Ouma had to lean down close to the drawer to make out some of the contents of the drawer. In the drawer was important looking files, and when Ouma looked through them, he found that they had a copy of the check-up he’d just had stored in here. There were other similar papers in the desk, including what looked like copies of photo ID’s of them. Ouma easily found his and looked at it as best he could in the dark.

It had basic information on him such as his eye color, his height, his gender, information that wouldn’t help Ouma at all. The things that were left unlisted were the things he was hoping to find when he first found them. There were no addresses, no relationships attached, no phone numbers–nothing that could help him in the slightest. He briefly checked the others ID’s too, making sure that he wasn’t the odd one out. As he flipped through the ID’s, he managed to confirm that there was nothing missing from his that wasn’t also missing from the others. He sighed softly.

After determining that he was done finding everything he could in that drawer, he slowly closed it, making sure it did not make any random loud sounds. He opened the drawer next to it. Now _this_ is what he’d been expecting to find. In the drawer, was an unorganized riot of processed snacks, shitty makeup, and useless, random trinkets. With a small giggle, he uncurled the bag of hard pretzels he found in the back of the drawer and took a look inside. Most of the bag was still left in there, so he took his chances by eating two before curling it back up and placing it back in the drawer. The salty taste was a welcome change from the bland and boring taste that he got from the rice.

He found some hair pins and a hairbrush laying on top of a small hand mirror. He picked up the mirror and looked at his face as best he could. Jeez, Amami and his nurse were right to show concern for him, his eyes were starting to look like a panda’s without the makeup. Looking at himself was getting depressing, so he placed the mirror back where he found it and continued to search through the door. He was glad he had low expectations for this drawer, because he found nothing worthwhile, even on his second search of the drawer, that could lead to any clues about anything _—_ other than the nurses’ conspicuously bad life choices.  

He moved onto the third drawer, but found that when he tried to open it, it was locked shut. There didn't seem to be any kind of trick to opening it besides needing a key, but finding that in itself could prove to be a problem. If they would go as far as to lock this drawer though…

The fourth drawer had similar stuff to the second drawer he had checked with makeup and other such materials thrown in there with abandon. When he went through the desk, he found no key there either, but it wasn't like he was expecting to. It would be pretty pointless to lock a drawer and then leave the key to it so close.

He found other similar things in the drawers surrounding it. An endless supply of random junk that probably shouldn't be in a place that was supposed to be clinically appropriate.

Finding nothing else to do, he turned his attention back to the computers. He observed their status for a second before doing anything. The monitor and the desktop were both off and the keyboard looked quite worn as if it had been used a lot. The only traces of dust on it were between the keys, so he wouldn't have to worry about it looking cleaner than it normally would be.

With one last glance at the nurse’s door, he switched the monitor on and then powered up the desktop. Waiting for the computer to boot up was horrendously painful. With every second that the computer took to boot up, his glances towards the door increased. It was different than the drawers; with those he wasn't running a high risk of the nurses being alerted. With the computers, they could easily sense that they were on at a time they weren't supposed to be on send a notification or even and set off an alarm.

His worries were pointless though as he got stopped at the password screen. He'd expect this of course, but he'd felt compelled to try anyway. He went back over to the drawer with all their ID’s and looked for anything that might contain a password. His search proved to be futile though as he once again found nothing. His eyes glanced towards the locked drawer and he inwardly cursed. If there was anything relating to important info, like passwords, it would probably be in there.

Sighing in defeat, he turned the computer off, watching for a few minutes to make sure that nothing unexpectedly turned back on. For kicks and giggles, he went back to the drawer with the pretzels and took two out again. He opened the drawer next to it and crunched the pretzel in his hand, letting the crumbs fall down into the drawer before splitting the other pretzel in half and throwing it on top of the crumbs.  He stuffed the other half in his mouth and walked away, holding back his laughter.

As he was heading back to his room, he passed Amami’s room. There was no light flooding in from under the door, so it was safe to assume that he was asleep. He pursed his lips; how far did he want to push his luck tonight? Apparently, he wanted to try to push it one last time, because he placed his hand on the door knob and gently turned it, pushing it in. He’d never woken Amami up before, so the prospect of knowing how he would react if he was to awaken to Ouma standing over him was something Ouma was cautious of. He didn’t want to be in there long, anyway. He just wanted to grab one thing and then quickly slip back to his own room.

Amami’s room was the same as his _—_ the same too white white walls, the same nightstand, the same stupid remote that would allow you to call one of those stupid nurses. What _was_ different about Amami’s room though was that on his nightstand, instead of the clipboard Ouma had, laid a bright orange bottle filled with pills. Creeping closer to the nightstand, slowly, Ouma tried to not make any noises or anything that would wake Amami up. He was definitely asleep, Ouma could tell by the way that the shadowy figure, with his back turned to Ouma, breathed in a rhythmatic and calming way that only those deep into their REM cycle could.

The pills rattled annoyingly when he picked them up and he flicked his eyes back to Amami, hoping he hadn’t woken up from that. He seemed to be lucky _—_ Amami’s body didn’t even stir for a second; Amami did say he’d been feeling more tired lately, so maybe it wasn’t too far of a stretch to think that he’d just sleep through noises.

He left the room quickly after, just like he’d planned. While he had the perfect, and probably only opportunity he’d ever have, to investigate Amami’s room, he didn’t manage to see anything particularly shiny to attract his attention. If there was anything that Amami _was_ hiding, he was hiding it somewhere nobody would be able to look while he was asleep, like under the mattress. There was no way to effectively check so long as Amami was laying on top of the bed so he decided to let sleeping lions lie for right now as he headed back towards his room. He checked the metal door, making sure nothing had come through yet before he finally entered his room. He went to the side bathroom and turned on the light.

The orange pill bottle he had in his hands said nothing besides “Amami Rantarou” on it and when Ouma opened it up, he found that the pills were nondescript, small, and white. So, without further hesitation, he poured the entire bottle into the toilet. He watched with interest as they silently dissolved immediately, and how they added no color or other discriminating factor to the water. Still, he flushed the water and went back to where his bed was. From there, he hid the bottle under his mattress.

He slept as light as a lamb through the night.

* * *

For once, he wished it was his nurse waking him up. Amami’s face glaring at him wasn’t exactly the most relaxing thing to wake up to.

“Where are they?” He asked Ouma.

“Huh? Where are what Amami-chan?” He asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning, trying to wake up from the depth of sleep.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t. And unless you tell me, I can’t help you.”

Amami pursed his lips. “You know, the pills you wanted me to give you so badly. Well, now they’re missing, and I don’t know where else they could have gone in the middle of the night.”

“It wasn’t me Amami-chan, honest, do you think I would just invade your privacy like that? You must have such a low opinion of me.”

Amami proceeded to smear the makeup with a vigor that was hardly needed.

* * *

Out in the hall, heading to breakfast, Ouma heard shouting. He was honestly surprised he hadn’t heard it before, but boy was it loud. There, at the nurse’s station, was all the nurses bickering their brains out.

“What are they even arguing about?” He asked Amami, hoping he’d know.

Amami watched the conflict with confusion. “I don’t know for sure...but I’m pretty sure I heard something earlier about one of the nurses eating some food the other had.”

“Oh.”

On the other side of the hall, he saw Shirogane quietly walking as fast as she could towards the dining hall, trying not to be noticed by the nurses. It seemed to work, because all three of them made it to the dining hall unscathed and unbothered by the nurses. Ouma smiled. They sure did go crazy over their belongings didn’t they? He would have to keep that in mind.

* * *

Breakfast progressed the same as always. He ate the rice and only a bit of the soup. He was so tired of this. Was it so difficult to give them some other food at this point? Wasn’t there going to be a point where they started to wean them off of rice and soup so their bodies could get “used to” normal food again? Ouma had never trusted anything they’d said before, but that visit with the doctor had really exposed how deep their lies ran. He doubted the nurses would do anything to help them, Ouma barely had contact with his own one anymore, and when he did, it was awkward and strained, and her eyes tried to find any other place to look but his eyes.

“We’ve been on a diet of rice and soup for weeks,” Momota groaned, sharing his thoughts. “I’m so tired of this stuff. Will they ever give us something different to eat?”

“Yeah, I’m sure they will, we just have to be patient!” Akamatsu said cheerfully next to him.

Yet, for as cheery as she looked and acted, her food almost went close to untouched.

* * *

Amami, as Ouma thought he would, did not tell the nurses about the missing pills. He did not start to get his headaches again until after dinner, when he usually took his pills, but even then, it was miniscule. Amami brushed it off as the still lingering side effects of the pill running through his system and prepared for the pain that would grow by tomorrow. Ouma duly noted that Amami had finished his soup, something he’d been doing ever since he was instructed on how to take his medicine.

The night of the twelfth tally mark he ventured outside again.

* * *

The hair pins in the nurse’s drawer, the one he had sprinkled the pretzels into, cried out to him and aggravated him into a headache; he felt compelled to take them, so he did. He stuffed them into his pocket and went back to his room. He threw them under his bed so he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore and went to sleep.

There was still nothing at the door.  

* * *

Thirteen tally marks on a sheet of paper that counted down the days of his life; the days he spent withering up in some place who knows where.

He felt like he knew nothing, yet everything at the same time.

* * *

At breakfast Amami started to complain about having headaches again.

“I get headaches too sometimes,” Akamatsu told him sympathetically. “Most of the time I just try to ignore it though. It’s not as bad as the pain I feel around my neck sometimes. The doctors said I got my neck all mangled in the accident and my windpipe was almost broken.”

Ouma opened his mouth to reply when he felt Amami kick him hard under the desk.

“Ow,” he whined quietly. If the other two noticed, they took no interest. Sure, he was going to tell her that she shouldn’t take everything they said at face value, but he was also reminded of the ever present pressure he felt. He knew _where_ she was coming from, but she was still just plain wrong about its origins.

Amami laughed at Akamatsu. “We can suffer together then, okay? It’s always easier when you know you have somebody you can rely on.”

Amami drank down the entire bowl of soup.

By the time lunch came around his headache had decreased significantly.

When he asked Akamatsu, he found a similar answer. Her headaches had, in her case, gone away completely, but for some strange reason, she would still get the pain around her throat every now and again.    

As he observed them eat, he noticed something that the two shared in common.

He dipped his spoon into the miso soup and pulled it up. It looked like miso soup, and it definitely tasted like miso soup, but…  He let the spoon fall back down into the bowl with a loud splash. It suddenly became clear to him why the doctor had wanted to know if he was eating the soup.

When they got back to his room, Ouma quietly urged Amami not to eat the soup. He didn’t listen.

* * *

Before dinner time came around, Ouma heard screaming in the halls again. Without a way to be in the hall to see what was happening, Ouma strained his ears–not like he had to do it much with how loud they were screaming–to listen in.

“Rebecca, did you steal my fucking hair pins?!”

“What?! No!”

“You did, didn’t you? And it’s all because your stupid fucking brain thinks I ate your dumb ass pretzels!”

“No, I swear on it!”

“Ugh, calm down, both of you! They’re just hair pins. I’ll buy more later, okay?” That voice didn’t even need to scream to have Ouma know it was his nurse.

“But they were my special pins,” the other nurse whined. That was a horrible lie, there was nothing special about those hair pins, they were plain as could be.

That seemed to settle the other nurses as silence regained its place in Ouma’s ears.

Were these seriously the people who were supposed to be taking care of them?

Ouma sighed and went back to writing out his notes in vague detail. In the next line of his notes, though, he made no effort to be subtle when he wrote about how stupid he thought the nurses were.

His nurse came into his room and checked to make sure he was okay before she had to leave to help get dinner ready.  

Even she had seemed quite exasperated with her co-workers.

“They get dumber and dumber with each day, I swear,” she’d mumbled under her breath as she was leaving.

At dinner, Ouma didn’t touch the soup and only at a little bit of the rice. He glanced at the people at other tables too. They seemed to be just like Amami, diligently eating both their soup and their rice and Ouma noticed that a majority of others also had orange bottles like Amami had. When he saw one of them open, he even realized that it was the same white, indescribable pill that Amami had. He bit his lip. At least he’d never seen Momota or Akamatsu (despite her claiming she had headaches too) with one of the bottles, so that left a few less people at least.

* * *

He decided not to push his luck with another night of causing a fight between the nurses. It was actually sad how stupid they could be.

Late at night, almost right before he went to bed, his nurse came into his room, fiddling with her apron.

“Is there anything you need? Anything at all?” She asked, looking at him like a lost puppy.

“Hmm, nope! I’m good, thanks though, Nurse-chan.”

“You can tell me that you hate me, you know.”

“What? I don’t hate you Nurse-chan!”

“I know it’s true. You don’t have to lie to me. I’ve been horrible, I haven’t been doing my job.”

“Unless you want to actually help me for once, I doubt there’s anything you can do,” he replied.

“Right…” She found a loose string on her apron that she picked at insistently.

“Is there a reason you’re still standing there? Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” He asked, flicking his eyes to the door.

“Hmm, I suppose, but… I did say I would take care of you,” she mumbled. “We agreed I would take care of you.”

“Well, you’re not. Amami-chan does more than you.”

She yelped, and flicked her eyes up to him. Her bottom lip wobbled. “Now, you don’t really mean that, do you?”

“Of course I do. Anything you can do, Amami-chan or one of the others can do just as well, and with less complaining.”

“Well, then, I suppose…” her lip wobbled more and her eyes became glassy with tears. “I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.”  

“Yeah? And how do you plan to do that now? I just told you you’re nothing to me.”

His harsh reply never reached her ears, she was too far gone, mumbling over and over,“my promise… I’ll keep my promise...I’ll prove myself.”

“Hey! What promise anyway?” But she ignored him.

She left the room mumbling to herself like an old man lost in the woods.

Ouma huffed at her back as she left. Was she talking about what the doctor said to him when he was getting his check up? There were too few clues and next to none in answers.

If Amami came into his room or walked around at all that night, Ouma didn’t know. He stayed up to check the door once, and then was gone from his current reality within the hour.  

* * *

Fourteen was a big number! It was the amount of time that meant that two weeks had gone by! Wasn’t that exciting? Knowing that two weeks were gone off of the time one had left in their life. Ouma just thought it was plain frustrating. And wasteful.

* * *

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, the day passed him by without anything happening. Amami and makeup and soup. Akamatsu and nail paint and a neck pain. Ouma and pressure and a headache and a never ending lie. Days he spent observing and calculating and nights he spent investigating and taking action. He felt as if he was losing a grip on his situation and he was roaring like a lion trapped inside a cage, desperately trying to bring it’s crushing paw down on the taunting tamer. If only his sharp claws were just a bit longer… No matter. He would sharpen them on the cage and gnaw on it too in wait for the one day the cage momentarily lifted up so he could pounce on his taunting prey. All he needed was one good shot at the throat, and when he pounced, he’d make sure it hurt.   

* * *

He sat in his room, waiting for the nurses to finally turn the lights out. It was close to ten and the nurses were still chattering at the station. He heard the sound of the drawers opening and closing before he heard the door in the distance open for the eighth million time it seemed like since he’d been here. The lights he noticed, however, remained on. So, as to not to raise suspicion, fearing somebody could be watching him, he turned the lights in his room off, creating a dark shadow to anybody who was looking at his door from the outside.

Yet, still, the lights remained on, and he bit his tongue. No, it wasn’t safe to go out yet. There was always the possibility they just forgot to turn off the lights, but that was too dangerous a theory to te-

The door in the distance flung open with a loud screech and he winced at how loud it was.

“Epp! I’m sorry, I forgot to turn the lights off and grab something! I’ll be there in a second guys!” He heard the familiar voice of his nurse back in the hall. There were other muted words that he couldn’t make out from the other nurses, but the door closed again, leaving, what he assumed, was just his nurse on this side for right now.

He quickly swung his body down onto his bed and turned his back to the wall, so he’d be able to see when the lights were finally off, pulling the covers up to his neck in an attempt to seem like he was sleeping. It seemed his nurse had true intentions though as she first turned off the lights so she would not forget again. After that, though, was were it got interesting. He did hear he say she had left something, but he heard the noise of a lot of the drawers rattling around. It wasn’t just one drawer, she seemed to be going through all of the drawers in a frenzied manner.

Finally, it seemed like she found what she was looking for as she paused before slamming another drawer shut and rushing back over to the door.

It made a creaking sound as she opened it. “Good night!” she called out, to the nothingness of the hospital. Ouma briefly wondered why they were allowed to be alone like this at night. Was it that they trusted them to just sleep like little lambs throughout the night? He felt as if there was another reason other than just that the nurses weren’t around.

The door closed with a solid thud and Ouma waited for a few minutes, unsure of what he should do. His mind replayed his encounter with Amami nights ago, where he had waited by the door, ready for Ouma to reveal he was awake and incriminate himself.

He slowly stood up. He had no other choice. No one could help him check to see if it was safe. He could wait to see if Amami showed up, but Amami hadn’t showed up since he’d before he’d started to take the pills and drink the soup.

He opened his door a bit, prepared for the worst to happen. When nobody rushed at his door for being open, he tugged it open just a bit more so that he could peak his head out of the door a bit. He saw nobody.

The nurse’s station was completely abandoned as well the entire hallway. The door opened more and Ouma stepped out of the room, his head swiveling around as he looked everywhere. He would only be able to let the tension flow out of him once he was back to the safety of his room without being caught.

He approached the nurse’s station, looking at the drawers. Just looking at them drove him crazy. Some of them were partially open while others were closed. And thinking about the state of how they looked inside… he shuddered at the thought of having to look through the drawers again. Hesitantly, he reached his hand out, trying all of the drawers, one by one. They were all the same as he remembered, disorganized and a neat freak’s nightmare.

When he tried the drawer that was previously locked though, he was surprised to find that it slowly creaked open. The sharp sound grated his ears, causing him to stop as he stared at the door to the nurse’s room. When nobody came out, he slowly pulled the drawer open more, inching it bit by bit until it was fully open. Once it was open fully, he knew he’d been right to assume this drawer was locked up for a reason. In the drawer, folders were stacked on top of each other. The folders were labeled neatly with their names on the side tab. Momota Kaito, Gokuhara Gonta, Ouma Kokichi… the list went on.

He reached for his own folder and pulled it out. The folder was crisp and new, barely used; it even still had that new folder smell instead of the one that permeated the hospital. He opened it up, expecting to find something useful. He was left wondering why he even got his hopes up at this point. All that was in his folder were mugshots of him and the same ID that he had seen before in the other drawer. The only difference between those ID’s and these ones was that in the top left corner there was a message in red ink, saying “admitted.” Judging by the wording, it sounded like this had something to do with coming to this hospital, but that didn’t seem quite right. If he was just coming to this hospital, and this was his ID card they had for him, then why did they have mugshots of him? Last time he remembered, being unconscious means you can’t stare into the camera waiting for a flash. No, unconscious people didn’t act or look at all like the way he was in these pictures. He took a quick glance into the other’s folders, trying to see if there was anything off about them, but found nothing.

He took a glance back at his papers, trying to see if there was anything that he’d missed in his initial search of it. He found nothing, so he quickly replaced the documents back into the drawer; he’d seen all there possibly was to see.

Out of spite for his failed mission though, he opened up the other drawer and ate all of that other bitchy nurse’s pretzels. Fuck her.

He walked back to his room, crunching down happily on his pretzels before he stopped short. There, in front of his very own eyes, was a piece of paper, laying in the hallway, in front of the metal door. He stuffed the rest of the pretzels into his pocket, well aware they were probably going to be crushed and create quite the mess, but he wasn’t exactly focusing on that right now. With measured caution, he crouched down to pick up the paper. He wondered how long it had been out there, just laying in plain site for anyone to see had they come out of their room. What would have happened if Amami had left his room and saw the note before him and refused to hand it over or, worse, pried even further into Ouma’s planning?

He stared at the paper, his eyes greedy for information, his patience extinguished. He scuttled off back to his room and brought the lights on just a bit so that it was just like a small night light in his room.

He took a deep breath to prepare himself and flipped the paper over. Ouma Kokichi felt his eyes widen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! There was a lot I wanted to do by the end of this chapter, but I changed plans a little from what I had written in my outline and so I think we'll get to how I wanted this chapter to end next chapter rip lol  
> Anyway, for the most part, it should start to pick up now I hope? We'll have to see lol  
> Have a great day and thank you all for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I love how AO3 shafted this chapter's formatting up the ass and made me fix it all C:

**Hello :D Is 11 still good for you?**

* * *

The handwriting on the note he received was curly and girly in nature. Ouma stared at it for a while, rubbing his eyes and holding the letter up to the light as if it would reveal some sort of hidden message. After his thousandth time of trying to find some sort message on the paper, he clipped it to his clipboard with another piece of paper on top of it. Using his pencil (now a nub of its former glory), he methodically rubbed the top paper in a futile attempt to pick up any indents left behind by the note underneath it. Anything—anything at all. But there was nothing. Nothing to ease the bubbling anger inside him. Two weeks of waiting and they couldn’t give him anything else? Not a clue, not an explanation, not a single thing except for a greeting and an expectation that their conversation would continue.

Ouma ripped the paper down the middle, before picking up the fallen half piece of paper and shredding it along with the other piece. He watched as the papers fell to the ground, huffing as he reigned in his anger. It was too late at night for him to be this angry, and with another huff, he kicked the shredded papers under the bed and fell asleep. 

He would think about the note tomorrow when he was more composed. The words from the note were seared into his mind like meat on a hot grill. Meat. Would he ever see that again? Now he was hungry  _ and  _ frustrated. Great. 

* * *

Amami was calmly putting on Ouma’s makeup (and Ouma had noticed with all the practice Amami had gotten that he’d become more proficient about doing it quicker) when Ouma’s nurse bust into the door.

“Rise and shin-” She cut herself off from her own happy exclamation as she noticed Amami in the room. 

“Oh, you’re here,” she snarled at him, nose turned upwards. 

Amami turned his head back to the nurse with a questioning look. “Um, yeah, I thought you said it was okay for me to take him to breakfast each day.” 

She seemed to shrink as he pointed out that she herself had allowed Amami to be more useful than her in the mornings. “Well, you’re not needed anymore, so would you mind leaving? I’ll take over bringing him to his meals again, thank you though.” 

Amami looked befuddled as he tried to make sense of his nurse’s erratic behavior. “Erm, sure, I mean, I really don’t mind…”

Ouma looked at them, feeling something unexplainable welling up in him. 

“WAHHHH!” Ouma suddenly cried out, making both of them jump a bit. “I DON’T WANT MY STUPID NURSE TO TAKE ME TO MY MEALS!” 

“Ah! No! Don’t cry!” She rushed over to him and brought him into a hug, which only made him cry harder. 

“GET OFF OF ME!” 

She jumped away from him, waving her hands in the air as she tried to calm him down without touching him. 

“Please! Don’t cry! What can I do to make you stop crying?! You’re being too loud!” 

He sniffed his nose, finally slowing down his crocodile tears as he glared up at her. “You can,” he hiccuped, rubbing some of the tears from his eyes, “you can leave and let Amami take me to my meals. That’s what would make me happy and make me stop crying!” 

“Make you happy?” 

“You said you want to help me get better right? The only way to make me get better is to let me be happy.” 

“I understand that! ...really, I do,” she said, suddenly looking downtrodden. “I guess, it’s not that big of a deal if he kept taking you down to your meals then…” 

“Oh! Thank you Nurse-chan,” Ouma smiled, suddenly all smiles and rainbows. 

She looked at him eyes searching his face as his mood suddenly shifted. “Just...just let me know if I can do  _ anything  _ for you, okay?” With that said she turned around and walked out the door and Ouma could briefly see a few nurses trying to peer into the room to try to catch a glimpse of whatever drama was happening before the door closed again.

He turned his attention back to Amami when he heard him laughing. 

Ouma’s face turned blank as he stared at Amami. In his coldest voice he asked, “What’s so funny Amami-chan?”      

That only seemed to make Amami laugh harder as Ouma tried to intimidate him. “Running makeup is a good look for you, Ouma-kun, you should go for it more often.” 

He scowled at Amami, but couldn’t help the small smile that twitched its way onto his face. “Fix it, Amami-chan,” he whined out, his smile only growing as Amami’s did. 

“Nah, like I said, I like the look on you,” Amami said as he approached the bed and picked up Ouma to place him in the wheelchair.

“Eh?! I said fix it, Amami-chan!” He yelled at Amami, pushing his hands into Amami’s face and struggling against his hold as Amami just laughed. 

A nurse peeked her head in at hearing all the noise, and Ouma immediately went limp in Amami’s hold, trying to seem as meek as possible. Amami stumbled for a second at the sudden change in weight he had to hold up, but quickly found his footing again as he looked at the nurse. 

“Is everything okay in here?” She asked, sounding less concerned about their safety and probably just looking for some juicy gossip. 

“Yup, you don’t have to worry. Sorry about the noise,” Amami apologized fearcily as Ouma did nothing but continue to glare at the nurse. 

“Ah, okay, well, just making sure.”

She excused herself from the room and Amami continued to place Ouma down. “Here, I’ll fix it if you really want me to,” he said, not waiting for a response as he began to get the materials out again. 

Ouma just pouted at him as he wiped away the smeared makeup and began to quickly apply the new layer of it. 

“There, is that better?” Amami asked as he came back from washing the makeup off of his hands. 

“Well, I don’t exactly have a mirror to judge you, buttt, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it’s okay.” 

Amami smiled at him. “Thanks.” 

* * *

When they were slowly going down the hall to breakfast, Ouma watched as the nurse opened up her drawer and froze before frantically rummaging through the drawer. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she rose her head up and Ouma could have sworn he saw fire in those eyes as she turned to the other nurses who were all staring at her curiously.

“You BITCH!” She screamed before lunging at one of the other nurses. “I thought I told you not to take anymore of my pretzels! Not only did you take more, you took the whole bag?!” 

“I didn’t! I didn’t! I swear!” 

“Yeah, well then who took them?!” She shouted at the other nurse, who stared at her for second before weakly sputtering as she couldn’t come up with another explanation. The entire thing only lasted about a minute, but by the time the nurses managed to pull them off of each other, the attacked nurse was disheveled and shaken. Ouma grinned. 

When they got seated at the dining hall, Amami held his hand out expectantly under the table. Ouma laughed and shook his head. 

Once they got back to Ouma’s room, Ouma unfurled the crushed bag of pretzels and split what was left of the pretzels between the two of them, laughing merrily as they recalled the morning’s events. 

* * *

Sometime in between breakfast and lunch, Ouma felt himself pick up his paper and pen, placing it neatly in his lap. He stared down at the paper, seeing the pure white of it stare back at him, as if daring him to write something down. How should he respond to that message that lay shredded somewhere on his floor?

Deciding to just do  _ something  _ he picked up the pen and began to carefully write his message, thinking everything through before he wrote it down. 

In the end, he ended up shredding several more pieces of paper before he decided on the final version. 

**Hey, Mystery Person! What’s your name? Unless you just want me to keep calling you Mystery Person that is!**

**P.s. Does this answer your question?**

He looked the message over, nodding before hiding it in his clipboard again. He refused to sign his name, but conceded it would already be pretty easy to trace the papers back to him if the nurses tried hard enough. He had no idea what the people on the other side of the door were like either. He took the paper back out again, jotting down another quick note. 

**P.s.s. I’m pretty sure this is self explanatory, but don’t let anyone know we’re doing this. Are you safe to be doing this? Shred this note when you’re done with it. I’ll look for a reply tomorrow. Who knows what will happen to you if you don’t~**

Now he was satisfied with it. He groaned in frustration though when he realized it was nowhere near nighttime. 

If there was one thing Ouma couldn’t stand, it was being bored, yet bored he was.

Bored out of his mind, he fell asleep until lunch and then again between lunch and dinner. He was so anxious with anticipation that he barely caught that his nurse hadn’t been seen around the entire day. It was strange, but nothing he was too worried about. 

* * *

Nighttime fell upon them, or at least what  _ they  _ called nighttime, and Ouma waited until 11 P.M. before pushing the note under the door and slipping back to his room. He didn’t hear any sounds of the paper being picked up, but didn’t expect to.

When he was sure that the note would not be sent back, he went to bed to get an early start on his sleep for once. 

* * *

As helpful as Amami was in the mornings, Ouma wished that he could do some things by himself. With every day, his resentment towards the wheelchair grew stronger and he had the urge to just stand up and walk out of his room on his own. The nurses wouldn’t notice anything, probably, and it was getting quite tedious to walk around on his own two legs in the dead of the night, covertly sending notes and eating pretzels.

Despite this, he sighed and let Amami continue to help him with his charade. It was frustrating, but if Amami was unwilling to break his resolve to help Ouma, then Ouma would honor Amami’s resolve and continue this frustrating fakery. 

At the breakfast table, his thought drifted to that time before nighttime, where he tried to do anything he could to stave off the boredom growing in his chest. Nothing came close to the thrill he had felt when he first laid eyes on that note. Even if the note made him angry, even if the note left too many questions, it sure wasn’t boring; the feeling became instantly addictive to him, and he longed to feel it over and over again. It was all he could think about. 

Iruma snapped her fingers in front of his face, making him jolt back to reality. “Stop thinking about getting laid, because it ain’t gonna happen! Now move your fucking piece you stupid virgin.”

Ouma stared at the game board and then fixed his eyes upon Iruma. “At least I don’t suck cock for a living. It must be so horrible for you, knowing that none of the guys here want to fuck you or get sucked off by your filthy pig mouth.” 

“Y-You don’t know that!” Iruma shouted at him, looking slightly frazzled. 

“Well fellas?” 

When nobody responded, or looked even slightly inclined to agree, Iruma let out a squeal as Ouma smiled at her, holding his hand up to his mouth as if he was going to tell her a secret.

“That’s okay, Iruma-chan, we already know that nobody could love a whore like you.” 

“I-I…”

 Ouma rolled the dice and moved his piece six spaces. When nobody moved to go after Ouma, he sighed and looked at Iruma’s disgustingly drooling face. 

“Your turn, you sex-addicted bimbo.”  

“R-Right! Right away, sir!”

Ouma found Iruma to be slightly amusing to tease. He wasn’t so sure the others thought that about her though. She at least seemed in control of herself though; Ouma decided she was one of the people who either didn’t have pills or took them sparingly. He would have to look more into who had what sooner rather than later.  

* * *

When he got back to his room, after dinner but before nighttime, he took out his map and marked down the people who he never saw taking meds.

He knew for a fact that Amami had no pills, as he took care of that himself, and he marked the other two that sat down at the table with him for meals as also having no drugs. From what he’d been told by Amami, he was instructed to take them with food, so if there was a prime time to take them then it would have to be during at least one of the three meals they got a day. They didn’t offer any snacks at all to the patients, so it was safe to assume that he would be able to see who had drugs during the course of one full day. 

He’d make some notes tomorrow morning about it. 

The rest of the time passed by slowly, and he finally picked up the book he had stopped reading a while back and gave it another try. He hoped it would take his mind off the note.

* * *

Lights out, doors shut, no Nurse-chan coming back because she “forgot” something like the idiot she is. What did she even forget anyway? It was clear that she had gone through their station, but what could she have possibly taken from the locked drawer? It was pretty foolish of her to have left it unlocked too.

It wasn’t exactly eleven, but he decided to go out and check the nurse’s station anyway, just to see if they had even bothered to relock the drawer. He quietly padded his way out toward the nurse’s station and attempted to open the drawer from last night. He was disappointed to find it was closed and locked.He wondered if the person who left it unlocked realized her mistake and re-locked it. There wasn’t much in there, but a locked drawer was a locked drawer, and he supposed it would be suspicious if it didn’t stay that way. 

He suddenly had a horrible thought. What if someone was watching? What if they were  _ always _ watching? He supposed that there  _ must  _ be some kind of surveillance somewhere, but so far nobody had called him out on anything yet. Unless he was just a pawn in a sick game of cat and mouse. He forced the thought away with a quick shake of his head and a deep breath.   

That epic display of preternatural stupidity those bickering bitches engaged in over a simple bag of pretzels ensured no one was watching or recording anything. He laughed at his paranoia.  

In the silence of the hospital, he heard a small  _ swish  _ sound and perked up. He went back to the door, and sure enough, there was another letter waiting for him there. 

He picked it up and strained his eyes to quickly read it in the dark hospital hall. 

**Yes, it does, thank you very much! As for my name… what’s yours? I’ve been told I shouldn’t really give my name out to anybody, but I have a feeling you’re not just *anybody* whether you know it or not. So, I guess you can call me Saihara? Don’t tell anybody though. We can’t talk through the walls, but we can pass more than one letter a night. I’ll wait by the door until 1 to see if you send anything back.**

**-Saihara**

**P.S. I’ll shred the papers, I promise. If you want to say anything back tonight, just keep sending it on this paper, I’m sure it would be much easier than going back and forth to get more paper.**

Ouma stared at the letter in consideration. Was it safe to send a letter back tonight to this “Saihara” person? It seemed so—after all they had the upper hand if they wanted to rush over to this side of the hospital. This side of the door was the keyhole, meaning that on their side they had the actual lock. It would be all too easy to just open the door from their side. That was something else he’d have to take into consideration when talking to this person as well. They could also be the only way that Ouma might be able to get out of this hospital. The only other door Ouma couldn’t open, besides the metal door, was the door that the nurse’s went into each night. There could possibly be a way to escape through there, in fact there probably was, but he had no way of telling for sure; it wasn’t as if he could just go strolling through there at any part in his day. 

As much as “Saihara” was trying to be considerate to him by telling him he didn’t have to go and get more paper, he had to go back to his room anyway to get a pen. It was a nice thought, though. 

He’d went back to his room with the sole purpose of grabbing his pen, but ended up sitting down on his bed anyway to write the message out in his room instead. He knew he wouldn’t have the luxury of doing so in the future, but while he had the opportunity to, he’d much rather be sitting down. 

**How do I know you’re telling the truth? And just what do you mean by you “feel like I’m not just *anyone.*” Do you know me? As for *my* name, hmmm, I’m not going to tell you just yet! What would be the fun in that? You can call me whatever you’d like in the meantime.**

**-Mystery**

**P.S. I still had to go back to get a pen, but it was a nice thought though, thanks.**

Satisfied with what he wrote, he went back to the door and slide it under, waiting to see if there would be a reply back. He remained standing the entire time, too wary to be caught off guard. This wasn’t like somebody from his side catching him off guard. He couldn’t see someone approaching and didn’t know this person. And yet… just seeing the name “Saihara” filled him a weird feeling and started to bring on a headache. He’d come to learn that these headaches, for as much as they hurt, perhaps weren’t such a bad thing. There was a reason for them. A reason the nurses didn’t want anyone to learn. So, even though he hated the pain that came with them, he was starting to trust in his headaches more and more for when an intellectual solution escaped him. That’s why, even though it was risky, and much, much more prudent to hightail it back to his room, he found himself standing by the door, waiting for the response he knew would come. 

It was also strange for Ouma to be more at ease with whoever was on the other side of the door. Even though he didn’t know them, it was a relief to let go of all the pretending—the mask of fraility. Of course, he still had to keep his mental mask sharp, but even that felt like it was easy when he was only talking though notes; he could analyze the conversation, and even steer it, much in the same way he could when talking.  

Sure enough, after a few minutes passed, another letter came under the door, and the door remained fiercely shut. 

**I don’t think anybody, or at least that’s in my situation, would really have a reason to lie about what their name was, but I understand why you don’t want to tell me yours. It’s okay…**

It looked as if there was something else they had wanted to write here, but it was scribbled out and left Ouma not a single clue of what it could have said. 

**I’m sorry you had to go and get a pen anyway. I didn’t think of that, haha. I thought you might have just had a pen on you or something, I’m sorry! It’s about 12 right now, so we still have some time to talk...**

**-Saihara**

Taking the pen out that he brought from his room, he pressed the paper up against the wall, using it as a support to write on. It made the pen wobble a bit on certain words, but for the most part there shouldn’t be any confusion over what he wrote. 

**How are you “Saihara?” What are you here for?**

**-Mystery**

As much as he wanted to ask the big questions that could really help him, he wouldn’t do that yet. He would work Saihara up to it first before he laid the big questions on him. He still wanted to check this person out a bit before he did anything more. He picked up the paper as it slid back over to his side. He noticed that even for simple questions and replies such as this one, there was quite a lag between the answers. It was a flawed way to communicate, but it was better than nothing. Still the lag seemed...unnecessary? There was that headache again. 

**Mystery,**

**I’m...okay, thank you for asking. How are you? I guess you could say I’m here for a similar reason you are... That’s why we’re classified in the same ward type.**

**-Saihara**

That first part was slightly concerning to Ouma, but he let it slide, more interested in the second part of the letter. So Saihara was here for a similar reason that he was? But did he know that for sure? How would he even know that Ouma was here for a “similar” reason. He supposed it might not be something too strange if Saihara had asked the nurses what was up with the metal door too. 

**Saihara-chan,**

**I’m good. A bit tired, but good. Oh, a similar reason? What happened to you then?**

- **Mystery**

Under the door...wait a few minutes. Actually, this time he was waiting quite a few minutes. He started to fidget, feeling tired, from both standing for a long time and being awake late for so many nights, and from feeling anxious about the situation. Finally, the paper slid back under the door and Ouma scowled as he read it. 

**Mystery,**

**I guess you could call it an “accident” that landed us here. You should go to bed, it’s close to 1 now. Wouldn’t want you to be too tired! Keep this letter on your side and do what you want with it, although I would prefer if you shredded it like we agreed on… if you want to use this as reference for something, I understand, but you can’t let anybody see this.**

**-Goodnight,**

**Saihara**

And just like that, their conversation was over, and Ouma was left feeling as if it had never happened in the first place despite the concrete evidence that he was holding in his hand. He went back to his room, scanned the letter to see if there was anything hiding that he had missed when they were “talking” earlier, and, as Saihara had asked, shredded it once he was done. Just to mask the trail of it a bit more, he ripped up a few of his doodles too, and wrote a few words on a piece of paper before shredding that as well. 

He looked at the slowly thinning stack of paper on his nightstand and wondered how many trees he was going to end up killing by the end of everything. 

Saihara was wrong about one thing though, it wasn’t exactly close to 1. It was 12:45 A.M., but still he had been pushed away by Saihara. He sighed and figured that the fact that he could even get something out of the other side without being instantly caught tonight was victory enough. 

He laid his head down on the pillow, feeling himself start to nod off, before hearing a noise in the distance. He almost missed it, almost thought it came from his paranoid imagination, before he heard a door gently shutting. It wasn’t Amami, that was for sure; the noise sounded much to close to be Amami as he’d heard him shut his door what seemed like a million times when Ouma was listening at night. No, it sounded like it only came from two doors down. He froze as he heard footstep, soft but still getting louder, meaning the person was definitely coming down the hall towards Ouma’s room. 

Ouma felt his heart jump up into his throat. Did he miss something? Did somebody see him? The footsteps got louder and louder and Ouma’s heart started to beat louder in his ears and it seemed as if the air was getting harder to breathe with every time he tried to take a breath. As the person stopped in front of Ouma’s door, he snapped his eyes shut, but this time being careful to keep himself facing the door. He opened up his eyes just a crack; even though it hurt his eyes from straining to see out of such a small field of view, it was worth the pain to know who owned the footsteps. Much to his surprise though, whoever was out there completely ignored Ouma’s room and started to walk away from his door again. This time though, Ouma could definitely tell where the footsteps were going—straight towards the metal door. 

Ouma listened with fascination as he heard the knob of the metal door rattle as whoever was there was determined to keep trying to open up the door. Ouma almost scoffed at them—that door was definitely not going to unlock no matter how many times they kept trying. It could only be opened one of three ways, as far as Ouma could see. One way for the people on the other side to unlock it, another was putting a key into this side, and the third way was...lockpicking? Sure he’d seen it done a few times in movies and other media, but Ouma didn’t think there was any reason why he should be thinking about something like that now, especially because there was probably nobody here who could even do it in the first place. Ouch—that headache again! What was going on tonight?! 

It was a sad thought, but until they found out more, there was little they could do on their side of the door to escape. They were, essentially, caged mice with no obvious way out. 

The other person seemed to understand that too as they retreated from the door, only to not walk back to their room and instead walk around to what sounded like the nurse’s station. He could tell by the overt creaking of the drawers. Those same drawers he spent so much time opening slowly and silently to conceal his activities. But this person was being obvious and brazzen. It was like they didn’t care if they got caught. 

Well, maybe that wasn’t too far of a stretch. While it would be bad for them to get caught slinking around in the nurse’s station, for sure, it wouldn’t be as bad as if Ouma was found. At least this person would only have defend themselves against  _ why  _ they were snooping around at night, not  _ how.  _ Ha!—perhaps they would take the fall as the notorious pretzel thief!

If Ouma didn’t have to uphold his own secret, he might have found it wise to join whoever this person was out in the hall, if only to tell them to at least  _ try  _ to be more stealthy about what they were doing. What was happening right now was a coincidence, something that would probably never happen again, but if it did… he might have to ask Amami to peak his head out for Ouma at night if only so Ouma didn’t have to wonder about who was sneaking around out there. 

After the person apparently got fed up with not finding anything other than drawers full of makeup, they went back to their room. Ouma heard their door close again (why was it so hard for him to tell which door it was?) before silence overtook the hospital. He closed his eyes and finally went to sleep. 

* * *

“Did you hear anything last night?” Ouma probed.

Amami tilted his head, looking at Ouma curiously. “No, I didn’t. Why, did you accidently slam something? I mean...I wasn’t up in the first place, but nothing woke me up.” 

“Hmm. Okay, thank you~!” 

* * *

At breakfast, he noticed Momota yawning and rubbing his eyes more than often.

“What’s wrong Momota-chan? Didn’t get enough sleep last night?” 

“Huh? Of course I did! Not getting enough sleep is horrible for your health!” 

Ouma looked him up and down and Momota, much to his credit, did not do more than lightly squirm under his gaze. 

“Alright, well if you say so Momota-chan! I’ll take your word about it right now, but you should still go to bed earlier. You look so tired.” 

Momota sputtered and his face started to gain a red tint. 

* * *

When lunch time rolled around, Ouma noticed that Momota did look a lot more awake now, but that still didn’t excuse him from what Ouma had observed about him earlier. Ouma would have to see if the late night creeper came out again to judge for sure.

* * *

Ouma bit the end of the pen, knowing full well that it was making the pen disgustingly wet, but he couldn’t find it in him to care enough. He had no idea what he could say to Saihara tonight, and he didn’t want to waste tonight in fear that Saihara would get the idea that he wasn’t going to be sending messages anymore. Saihara and him had confirmed that 11 P.M. was a good time and, whether he liked it or not, that meant that he too had to stick to their schedule; he would just have to be extra cautious of being caught, that was all.  

He took the pen out of his mouth and scribbled lightly in the corner of the paper before beginning to write his letter. 

**Dear Saihara-chan,**

… Ouma tried hard to think of what to say after that. What  _ could _ he say to this person? They were, in all sense of the word, more mysterious than Ouma could ever hope to be. Sure they had revealed their “name,” but other than that, their entire existence was still a mystery to him. Since that was the case, then he should first try to clear that up. 

**How old are you? Do you do anything special in your free time? In my free time I like to be a**

A what? Why can’t he remember if he had any goals or ambitions, what the reason he kept pushing forward was? Sure, his reason for pushing forward while he was in this hospital was to discover it’s secrets, but what would he even want to become when he got out of here? What was his life even like before this? 

Giving up on thinking about it more, Ouma decided to scribble down the first thing that came to his mind. 

**Phantom Thief! I think they’re pretty cool, what about you? If you had the choice, what do you want to be? Of course, you’ll never be able to better than me, but I’ll ask anyway.**

- **Mystery**

He hid it underneath some papers for later and hit the call nurse button on the side of his bed. While he waited for his nurse to come, he absentmindedly scribbled on the nice, clean piece of paper in front of him. When she didn’t come after a few minutes, Ouma pouted and hit the button again, harder this time, as if the force of how he hit the button could somehow go straight through the remote and make her feel it. 

This time, his nurse actually came, rubbing her eyes as she did so. 

“What do you need?” she asked, biting back a yawn. 

“More paper!” He demanded once she walked in, taking in her appearance. Her clothes had some wrinkles on them, as if she had just rolled out of bed with them on after wearing them for  a day or so. Her eyes were starting to look like his without the makeup on, and Ouma wondered if she applied makeup everyday too. 

“Ugh, it’s a mess in here, do you really need any more paper?” She asked him. 

“Yeah, duh. Oh, and by the way, any other nurse would have just done that without giving me sass back.” 

She looked frightened at this. “Nu-uh! They probably wouldn’t have even gotten you paper!” 

“And there we go again with the backtalk. Just do me a favor and get me another nurse or Amami-chan, alright. Do you think you can do that, or do you have some kind of problem with that too?” 

She let out an undignified noise and rushed out of the room, only to return a few minutes later with another big stack of paper. 

“H-Here, is that good enough?” 

“Hmm, I suppose so,” he said, and pointed at the nightstand. “Just put it there, okay?”

She nodded at him and gently placed the stack of papers down on the nightstand. 

“Thanks, you can leave now.” 

“You...you should really be more grateful to me, y’know.” 

“Yeah, and why is that exactly?” 

“Because...because….” she trailed off, eyes flickering to any part of the room that didn’t mean she had to look at Ouma. She bit her lip. “Just go back to doing whatever you’re doing, okay, Ouma-san?” 

“Aw, and here I was asking for all this extra paper drawing this whole time because I hated it. Thanks, I will go back to doing what I was doing,” he said, smiling at her. 

She walked out of the room without another word, looking even more tired than when she walked in. He could only assume that the noise he heard in the distance was her going back to their room and back to bed. If he didn’t have things to think about, he’d probably be wasting his time sleeping too. 

But alas, he did have things he needed to think about, things he needed to do, such as reading his letter over a million times to make sure that it was perfect. 

With a sigh, he began. 

* * *

Dinner came around and there was a buzz around the dining hall.

“Hey, what’s all the commotion about?” Ouma asked Momota. 

“Didn’t you hear? Apparently one of the nurses let it slip that they might be changing up our food soon.” 

“See! I told you we just had to be patient!” Akamatsu chirped in from the side. 

Ouma scowled. “Oh yeah? And what are they changing it to?” He asked with mock curiosity. 

“Erm, I think it was just that they were changing our soup…” Momota said, scratching the back of his head. “I heard it was only for some of us though.” 

“How do you seriously not know what the details are?” 

“Shut up! I told you, I didn’t hear it first hand!” 

“Ugh, still useless.” 

* * *

11 P.M. and he was sneaking out of his room again. He stood in front of the door again, slipping the note under, lightly tapping his feet on the ground as he looked around the hospital as he waited. While he waited, he decided to do something useful with his time that would yield a big clue to what was happening happening: he would crack the passwords to the nurses computers.  

Again, the notes seemed to lag a lot between when he put one under and when he got one back. While this was certainly one of the longer series of questions that he had asked, it was taking a long time to get anything back. Ouma frowed, he’d have to keep his messages short if he wanted to wait less than 15 minutes to hear something back. 

Thankfully, though, Ouma managed to remember to bring his pen with him this time, so when the note slid back under the door, Ouma pulled it out of his pocket as he began to read the note, getting ready to respond. 

**Dear Mystery,**

**I’m a teenager. You are too, right? I don’t do much in my free time… A few things here and there, but that’s basically it. I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I have a few ideas, but I’m not sure if they’re good ideas. The one thing I’m good at is something I’m not sure if I ever want to do again...What did you do today?**

**-Saihara**

So Saihara was a teenager too? It wasn’t that hard to imagine actually. When he looked at the way Saihara wrote, it didn’t look as if it was written by an adult. There was also the insularity about his future when he grew up. 

**Saihara-chan!**

**You don’t have to worry about being bad at something! Just know that there’s somebody out there that you’ll always be better than, and somebody you’ll always be worse than! Of course, that doesn’t apply to me.**

**-Mystery**

For funsies, he doodled a little ghost next to his name before he sent it under the door to wait for a response. When he got one, the paper was beginning to look slightly crowded, or at least on the front page.

**Mystery,**

**...Thanks. Even if it was kind of backhanded, thank you. The same thing can be said about power over others, too, I suppose...**

It was all pretty normal stuff, until he got to the second part of Saihara’s letter. 

**Um, I know this might be a weird question to ask, but...what is your nurse like? On this side, we’re each assigned personal nurses, even though they’re never really around…**

**-Saihara**

Huh? While it wasn’t too weird of a question to ask, it was weird that Saihara’s nurses were never around; on this side they had more useless nurses than they knew what to do with them. Only about a couple of them were actually useful or invested in doing their job right from what Ouma could see. The rest of them could give two fucks. 

**Saihara-chan~**

**Don’t worry about not having nurses over there. Trust me, it's more a blessing than a curse. Do you want some of our nurses? Their skills include being nosey, intrusive bitches, bickering about stupid things, and not listening to you when you tell them to do something! I’d be glad to find a way to send a few over if you really want some~! My nurse is...weird. And I think a little crazy...but mostly just weird! My nurse loves me so much that I only have to threaten her a few times before she does what I want!**

**-Phantom Thief**

Andddd send. Ouma yawned, rubbing at his eyes. As exciting as it was to be doing this, it was also very tiring on Ouma’s body. Fatigue brought on a small stumble and he leaned against the wall for support. He laughed, thinking about how bad it would be if he fell asleep out here in the middle of the hospital. Would the nurses even notice his slumped over form on the ground, or would they be too busy gossiping? Would Amami find him first or would somebody else. If he had to place his money on it, he’d say that somebody else would probably find him first. They tended to be one of the last one’s to get to the dining hall, but perhaps that didn’t mean that Amami wasn’t one of the first people to leave his room… In his tiredness, he slowly let his body slide down to the ground, knowing it was a potentially fatal action, but passing out while standing and hitting his head on the ground would be actually fatal.

Ouma was so caught up in his own thoughts that when the paper slid back under the door, he jumped a bit as he was snapped back into reality before lethargically reaching over to get the paper. 

**Mystery/Phantom Thief ;)**

**Erm, I think I’m good thanks though, you can 100% keep your nurses. The silence over on this side can sometimes be overbearing, but whenever those nurses come around, it means trouble. The other two people who are on this side hate the nurses and lets just say there’s probably a reason they stay on your side; I don’t think many come over here unless they *really* need to. Threatening your nurse probably isn’t the best idea, they’re in charge of a lot of things about your life right now, so it might be wise to treat her nice at least every once and a while? I understand if you don’t want to...I don’t treat my nurse very nice sometimes either, but there’s no reason you should be mean to them all the time. Some of them don’t even want to be nurses here, some of them honestly hate their jobs here a lot. Others...like it, but for different reasons...Just be careful about what you do, okay?**

**-Saihara**

Ouma didn’t even hesitate to begin writing again on the paper. 

**Sai-chan!**

**Bleh, I supposeeeee I’ll be careful. If I’m careful does it mean I might get to meet you one day? It’s pretty late Saihara-chan, I think we should both go to sleep now. Goodnight, Saihara-chan, don’t let the nurses bite!**

**-Phantom**

**P.S. You should totally send this note back over to this side so I can shred it myself. If you don’t, I won’t ever message you again! <3**

That was a lie. Even if Saihara didn’t send him the paper back, he would still message him again. Saihara was his one and only source of reasons he stayed up at night anymore. What would be the fun in not making Amami do his makeup every morning?

**Good night.**

**-Saihara**

With the letter safely back on his side, he stuffed in his pants and quietly yawned, placing his hands on the ground as he prepared to stand up. It was then, of course, that he heard a door open and he froze, his heartbeat increasing exponentially. If he was scared of nodding off a few minutes ago, he didn’t have to worry anymore as adrenaline flooded his body. From what he’d heard the other night and from tonight, he knew it had to come from the boy’s side, so he quickly crawled as quietly as he could to the other side of the nurse’s station that lay parallel to the boy’s side. The desks they had there would hide him nicely from whoever was walking out of their room at this time, but if a girl walked out for whatever reason, he was dead meat. 

The footsteps, just like last night, padded straight over for the metal door that Ouma was just sitting at and, even though he was tempted to peak his head out to see who it was, he kept still as he sat in hiding, praying his breathing wouldn’t be heard and cause them to look where he was hiding.   

The person repeated last nights motions, jiggling the door knob, as if something might have changed. Where as last night he was more surprised at how stupid and obvious this person could be with their actions, he was now starting to grow some anger towards them. Sure, they had a right to sneak around too, but Ouma wished they wouldn’t be so conspicuous. It would be bad if they caught one of them and then accused them of doing something they didn’t do. If the person was accused of sneaking around earlier than midnight, they might catch Ouma by mistake. The only benefit he could see to this is if they took the blame for the mysterious disappearances of the pretzels; he was sure the nurses would love to have somebody to take their pent up anger out on. It would probably— no, most definitely—be funny to watch too.

What wasn’t funny, though, was that the person was moving again. His body tensed up again as he waited for the inevitable. There was nothing he could do now if they walked over to his side. Luck seemed to be on his side tonight, though, as the person walked around to the other side to get to the nurse’s station. It made sense to Ouma why they would do that, it would be less suspicious if he had walked along the boy’s side rather than the girl’s. 

That didn’t mean Ouma was in the clear though. Now that they were behind the nurse’s station, Ouma had to worry about them hearing him from where they were. While they would be unlikely to spot Ouma, scrunched up as tight as he could be against the desk to obscure himself from the person’s sight, there would be a very high chance they would hear him. Ouma knew he would hear somebody hiding if they were breathing as loud as he thought he was (he probably wasn’t breathing that loudly, the logical part of his brain supplied). 

It was nice to know that this spot was actually a good blind spot for him to avoid the nurses.

The person took a few more minutes to look around the nurse’s station again, checking each of the drawers, just as Ouma had done, but a bit faster, not caring that they were potentially going to be missing something. It sounded as if the locked drawer was still locked because Ouma could hear as the person pulled on the drawer, hearing it click and stay in place.

The person groaned and quietly mumbled—a male, definitely—as he gave up on the drawer and Ouma smiled—his hypothesis about who was out last night was correct. It definitely sounded like Momota, and combining that with the way that Momota was acting the previous morning lined up with everything perfectly. 

The guy, apparently done with his search, started to walk back towards his room. Ouma was able to hear as his footsteps got lighter as he walked away from Ouma’s position. When Ouma heard him open his door though, Ouma sprung into action, quickly rising and walking low besides the desks to peer around the side of the desks. He managed to look just in time to see Momota’s door gently closing, and just like that, the final nail in Momota’s coffin was sealed. 

Ouma snickered lightly as he walked back to his room softly, going in the opposite direction of Momota. He opened his door as quietly as he could and walked in, taking care to close it just as quietly. 

Ouma’s head was heavy with thoughts, but his spirit was the lightest its been in a long time. Ouma smiled as he shredded Saihara’s note. He fell asleep in an instant, thinking about what tomorrow would bring. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a MYSTERY *spoopy ghost*  
> If you have any questions at all about some things in this chapter, don't feel afraid to ask ~~as long as they're not spoilers lol~~ !  
>  I'd also like to take this chance to thank everyone who has even _read_ this fic!! It means a lot to me and I was so surprised when this reached a 1,000+ hits!! Thank you all very much for your support of this fic!!  
>  Now the bad news (kinda)...I'm going to be cosplaying (!!!) for the first time at a con that's coming up next weekend. I'm staying at a friend's as it's closer to the convention, but I don't know how I'm going to update this fic on time next week. If an update doesn't come by Monday, please know I am sorry and that I will be instead posting it on the following Sunday like I would normally do :C I'm really sorry!! I'm going to try to make it work out, but I'm just giving a forewarning if it doesn't!  
> Please tell me if you spot any weird formatting with this chapter, I'm so sorry AO3 messed everything up when I first put it in  
> Sorry about posting this so late at night! Have a great rest of your day and thank you for reading!


	5. Gift from a Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw I guess for this chapter?? (Like really, please read with caution) Near the end it can get a bit...weird when Ouma starts to be a bit out of it and the nurse refuses to stop what she's doing, so if you're uncomfortable with that, I would suggest skipping from where it says "Ouma struggled to get a hold of himself as the nurse..." down to where it says "He could only make out the figure of his nurse going..." thank you very much!!

Waking up today had been hell for Ouma. He was tired and lethargic and it took Amami even longer than normal to wake him up.

“Ugh. What do you actually want, Amami-chan?” He asked bitterly when Amami refused to leave him alone.

“Trying to get you to get up and go to breakfast like a normal human being,” he replied, trying to help prop Ouma up on the bed, getting frustrated when Ouma returned to his lying down position.

“Can’t you let me sleep in for one day?” he whined, refusing to get up when Amami tried again to get him to sit up. “Five more minutes, mom, I swear.”

“I am _not_ your mother, Ouma-kun.”

Ouma groaned. “Fine,” he said, finally picking his body up on his own so Amami could get to work.

While Amami worked on his face, Ouma took that as the perfect time to start a conversation that wasn’t fueled by sleep deprived rambling. “Amami-chan, you should come to my room tonight at 1 A.M.”

“1 A.M.? Is that how late you stay up to now?”

“Maybe~”

Amami pursed his lips at him and gave him a small, soft glare. “Fine, I’ll come to your room, but staying up that late better be worth it.”

Ouma smiled at him. “Oh, trust me, it will be.”

* * *

“What’s wrong, Momota-chan? You’re looking like you want to go to bed and go back to sleep for a couple more hours.”

Momota stifled a yawn and glared at Ouma. “No. Just because I’m tired doesn’t mean anything.”

“I never said it did. All I said was you look like you just want to go back to bed.”

Momota stayed silent at that, choosing not to take Ouma’s bait.

* * *

When he returned to his room, Ouma knew he would soon lose the battle to stay awake and wondered if Momota was in his room doing the same. It didn’t matter, honestly. If he was, that was all the better. That meant that he would be ready to go out again at night, and Ouma hoped the pattern continued.

It would be hard to predict Momota’s actions from here on out. Coming out once was understandable, coming out twice was too. The only problem was that Momota had been faced with defeat twice in a row. Was he determined or was he defeatist?

He figured that regardless, it wouldn’t be bad to have Amami come over, just in case he did need to confront Momota at night. The worst that could happen is that they would waste precious time to sleep.

If Momota came out of his room, Ouma would easily be able to confront him about the matter. He was truly an idiot if he didn’t recognize how loud he’d been slamming those drawers. It wouldn’t be hard for Ouma to emotionally and psychologically back him into a corner. He had this. It only took Ouma under 30 seconds to calculate the possibilities and plan a variety of actionable strategies. But 30 seconds of pondering was all that Ouma had left in his energy reserves. He passed out.  

* * *

Dinner passed by without a problem and Ouma briefly wondered if Momota was wrong about them getting new food. Probably, he figured. It wouldn’t be a big shock if it was just a rumor. He wondered who would be stupid enough to spread a rumor. They were a small group and it wouldn’t be hard to discover the author of such a rumor. Would there be more rumors? Would the rumors graduate into provocative whispers about a specific person instead of just being about food? Gossip would certainly create added tension in their tired, hungry, bored, and largely lifeless cluster.

No matter. If time was the only thing that would reveal the answer, than all he had to do was wait, and wait, and wait, and wait…

* * *

Nighttime, finally. He decided that he shouldn’t talk to Saihara seriously tonight and instead walked out of his room to shoot a quick **‘No messaging tonight, tomorrow instead. Send back. -Phantom.’** When the paper was slid back under the door, it had nothing added to it, meaning Saihara probably read it and sent it right back over. That was fine, it was better that he didn’t have to memorize anything tonight before he shred the paper up and kicked it around his room, watching as the papers flew around in a swarm. If he never got to see snow again, he would make snow angels out of paper instead, he decided.

Time passed and Ouma struggled to stay awake. How much longer until it was 1 already? He took a quick glance at the clock and wished he hadn’t. There was still an hour left. Maybe he should have asked Amami to come earlier and keep him company.

Ouma also knew that the walls were kind of thin, proved by the fact that the nurses had heard Ouma the other day when he was yelling at Amami. That meant that there was a slight possibility that if they were too loud in Ouma’s room talking or joking around, they had the potential to scare Momota off.

In a way, Ouma also thought of this as a test for Amami. What would he do, finding another person wandering around at night while he was walking over to Ouma. Would he do as Ouma hoped and bring Momota to Ouma’s room or would he try to do something about it on his own?

Ouma felt his eyelids start to droop and he pinched his cheek, trying to shock his body awake by causing pain. It worked for a minute before he started to nod off again. Too many nights of staying up late weakened his determination to stay awake. His mind started to scream at him, yelling at him to stay awake, but his body acted as if it was detached from it, no longer following any of his commands.

He tried to blink, but ended up keeping his eyes closed.

* * *

When Ouma woke up, a deep sense of dread filled him before he realized the lights in his room were still on and both Amami and Momota were standing in the room. Amami had been the one to awaken him, like normal, and he found himself relieved that his hopes had come through.

Ouma faked a gasp. “Momota-chan, what are you doing here?! To what do I owe this lovely late night visit?”

Momota shifted uncomfortably on his feet, but still met Ouma’s eyes, apparently refusing to back down.

“I found him when I was coming over to your room. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you Ouma-kun?”

“Me? Know something about Momota-chan sneaking about and slamming drawers? Nope, don’t think I do.”

“Slamming drawers?” Momota looked slightly panicked now, a drop of sweat running down his forehead.

“Yeah. You _definitely_ haven’t been waking me up every night,” Ouma said sarcastically.

“Well, that’s good, because I haven’t walked around a single night.”

Playing hard to get, was he? “Not a single night? Not tonight? Was it a ghost then? Or maybe you want to be a ghost? Are you wandering around, looking for some sort of way to join the afterlife?”

“G-Ghosts? There’s no such thing as ghosts!” He looked as if he was trying to deflect the conversation, but he was miserably failing. He started to shake slightly. “What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know, maybe there’s a special type of really stupid ghost that, instead of just going through things, they have to slam drawers and doors and touch things they’re not supposed to be touching. How cool! I hope the ghost shows up again, I want to meet him!” He exclaimed his eyes shining.

“A ghost that touches things?!” Now he looked positively lost and, Ouma thought, slightly spooked. Could it be that Momota was also actually afraid of ghosts?

“Well, if it wasn’t you, then who could it be?” Ouma questioned.

Momota let out an undignified screech, backing himself up and away from Ouma.

“Be careful, wouldn’t want you to go out there with a ghost haunting the place. This hospital is weird enough as it is, don’t want you to be hurt some how.”

“No, there can’t be a ghost here!” Momota said, trying to gather his bearings. It was obvious that Ouma’s words had shaken him though.

“Oh? And why isn’t it possible?” Ouma asked curiously.

“Because… alright, maybe I have been out a few nights. But I was too curious! A man’s gotta be curious and when he’s curious he’s gotta find the answers!”

Ouma hummed in response. “So there’s not a ghost walking around?” He asked, putting his pointer finger onto his cheek and tilting his head in curiosity.

“No! There’s no g-ghost!”

“Well, there’s no way of knowing for sure if there’s no ghosts, but I guess I’ll take your word for it.” He didn’t have to take his word for it, he knew it for sure. There was no questioning it.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Momota challenged him. “You going to tell the nurses I’ve been walking around at night now? It won’t make much of a difference to them.”

“I’m not too sure about that Momota-chan,” he teased. “Last time I heard, tensions between the nurses were...high. I heard they were looking for somebody who stole something from them in the night. It would be horrible if they accidently blamed you, wouldn’t it be?”

Momota seemed to have heard of the strifes the nurses had with each other because he hesitantly nodded his head in understanding of what Ouma was saying.

“Here’s what we’re going to do then. You’re going to help me, and in return I won’t tell anyone about what happens here after 10 P.M. How does that sound?”

“Like hell I’ll just let you boss me around!” Momota said, glaring at Ouma.

“Okay, got it, I’ll tell the nurses first thing tomorrow that I figured out who stole their pretzels and has been going through their drawers.”

If Amami wanted to call him out on the millions of bluffs he was pulling off, Ouma dared not take the chance to look in his direction and give Momota a hint that he was bluffing.

Momota seemed to be working through his possibilities in his head, because he stood still for a bit before sighing and nodding.

“Fine. The minute something gets out though, we’re done,” Momota said hesitantly before brighten up. “Plus, two heads will be better than one! If you’ve got my back and I’ve got yours, maybe we can figure some stuff out!”

If that was what he wanted to believe, than that was just fine for Ouma. Let him have faith in Ouma, let him think he had delved into the ocean's depth, but don’t reveal what Ouma had discoved.

“Sounds good. I’m glad you agreed, not like you really had a choice in the matter,” Ouma said, smiling at Momota and only letting a few small laughs escape his mouth. “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow. A general rule is that you’re not allowed to come out before one though, okay? It’s effective immediately! If I hear you out there, I’ll toss you to the dogs!”

Momota nodded, looking at him like he had 10 heads.  

“Now that that’s done,” Ouma said and directed their attention towards the abandoned chessboard on the floor, “anybody up for a quick game of chess?”

Momota groaned, shook his head, made up something quick about going to sleep and left the room. Amami stayed behind, watching as Momota rushed past him and stuck his hand out to prevent the door from slamming shut. He gently closed it and turned to Ouma.

“I can’t believe you just used me to blackmail somebody into working with you.”

“Well, believe it, because it just happened, Amami-chan.”

He only groaned.

“You’re really somebody special, aren’t you?”

Ouma’s face went blank, remembering Saihara’s note from a few days ago where he had written something similar to him.

“Not really.”

Amami went back to his room and Ouma stayed up for a few more minutes before heading back to sleep, hoping the next time he woke up would be breakfast time.  

* * *

Thankfully, it was. By the time he’d gotten to the dining hall, everyone had already arrived and was well into their breakfasts. Momota was still at the same table he always was, which surprised Ouma. He would have thought that Momota would have tried to run to another table to get away from him, but all this did was make it easier for Ouma to keep close tabs on him during their meals.

“Good morning, Momota-chan!” He yelled out when he finally got to the table. “Get some good sleep last night?” He asked tauntingly.

Momota looked like he wanted to punch him. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well that’s good, wouldn’t want you to be too tired.”

“Right...”

Amami and Akamatsu turned their cheek to the bickering couple to their side. They had better things to do than listen to Ouma tease Momota for the rest of breakfast. At least they could have some peace and quiet now, knowing that they would probably be busy the rest of their day.         

* * *

When he returned to his room, he felt his blood run cold. There was his nurse, on the floor in his room, with a big garbage bag next to her, shoveling papers from his floor into the bag with vigor.

“What are you doing!” He shouted at her, making her jump as she finally realized they were behind her.

“Oh, you’re back from breakfast. I’m just cleaning up for you!” She said smiling at him as she went back to cleaning his floor.

“No, stop that,” he said, his voice cold.

She looked him pointedly in the eyes. “You can’t live surrounded by papers forever. It’s getting filthy in here, and I will not have your health endangered because you want to hold onto useless papers.”

He wanted to shout at her again, tell her they weren’t useless, but knew he couldn’t do anything about it if he didn’t want to be questioned further.    

“Have you ever thought that living surrounded by papers is how I like to live?”

“Oh, I _know_ it's how you’d like to live, but you can’t keep doing this Ouma. If not for your health than for the potential fire hazard this causes. You can’t be burning your pretty little face or body, now can you? I’d be dead if anything bad happened to you.” Her face, normally flirting somewhere between happiness and annoyed was stone cold now, not giving a hint of what she was feeling. She was serious.

“Don’t take the papers,” he said again. “Leave the bag, I’ll have Momota pick them up instead. You deserve a break, girl. I don’t think there’s anybody here who works as hard as you. The other nurses must be envious of how well you take care of everything for them.”

She pursed her lips thinking a bit. “I thought you said you hated me?”

“Pftt, silly Nurse-chan, I could never hate you! I’m sorry for what I said, I was just...angry at the time.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes, of course, Nurse-chan! I love Nurse-chan!”

Her lips started to wobble. “Thank you, you don’t understand what it means to me to hear you say that.”

Yeah, he really didn’t understand. “It’s not a problem, Nurse-chan! You should go and get Momota-chan now and tell him to come and pick this all up.”

“Are you sure he’s going to be okay with that?” She asked, looking worried.

“Yeah, of course! I’m sure he’ll think it’s lots of fun.”

“Okay, I’ll go get him then!” His nurse cheered out, dropping the bag and walking out of the room, going to find Momota like Ouma had told her to.

She returned a few moments later with a disgruntled Momota in tow.

“Here you go, play nice, you two!” She said before she shut the door.

Both of them stared at each other awkwardly before Ouma sighed and pointed to the bag in the middle of the room. “Just...dump all of that out.”

“And why should I-” Momota started to say before Ouma cut him off with a pointed glare.

Momota grumbled something under his breath before he went over to the bag and dumped out all of the nurse’s hard work.

“I better not be picking all of this up again.”

Ouma laughed. “Maybe just a lot of it.”

Momota looked like he wanted to kill him.

“Here, come over here and pick me up and place me on the floor, I’ll help you clean them up.”

Momota sighed and did as Ouma asked, picking him up, with more force than necessary in Ouma’s opinion, and placing him near the bag on the floor. Momota sat down next to him and looked at some of the papers.  

“What even is this supposed to be?” He asked, rotating the paper as if it would become easier to see what Ouma had drawn.

“Let me see it,” Ouma said and took the paper from him and stared at it for a second before he nodded and handed the paper back to Momota.

“It’s an elephant,” he said proudly, pointing at the paper.

Momota looked at it as if it had ten heads. “A-An elephant?” He asked, staring down at the paper.

“Uh, yeah. Can’t you see it Momota-chan?” He pointed to the trunk of the elephant, and traced it’s body out as if that would help Momota see his picture. “Duh, how stupid do you have to be to not see it.”

“Right,” Momota said, still looking at the elephant. “Were you having a seizure while you were drawing it? Just wondering.”

“How rude of you, Momota-chan,” Ouma said and started sniffling and letting tears pool up. “I thought you were a really nice person to help me, but in actuality you’re just really rude and wanted to flame my art! It’s not even constructive criticism!”

“Jeez, you really know how to be a good actor, don’t you,” Momota said, watching as the other boy weeped crocodile tears.

“And now you think these tears are fake! How rude can you be to me today? I should have just let Nurse-chan stay!”

“Trust me, I wish you did too.”

* * *

Momota and Ouma worked dutifully in filling up the bag with papers. Ouma made sure to approve of all the papers before they were put in the bag, checking to make sure that the nurse hadn’t picked up any of the papers from his conversations with Saihara earlier when she was doing it. Or that she had looked in his clipboard, but when he looked at it, it seemed as if she hadn’t taken anything like the map, so she probably had just been focused on picking up the papers on the floor.

“Why can’t we just shove them all in here?” Momota asked, letting a bit of his aggravation show through as Ouma took the paper from his hands for the millionth time.  

“I can’t part ways with all of my art,” Ouma said, throwing the paper into the bag.

“...I think I’m going to have a stroke like that elephant if this keeps up,” Momota said, sighing.

Ouma just laughed at him and picked up another piece of paper.

* * *

They only stopped throwing away papers to go to lunch, in which Momota briefly took Amami’s role and brought Ouma to the dining hall himself.

“Oh, no one’s dead yet, that’s a relief,” Amami had laughed and said once they came over to the table.

“I’m just as surprised as you,” Momota admitted and went to get their food.

* * *

By the time they were done, the bag was mostly full with papers, all of which Ouma had approved of. There were still papers scattered all around his room, but Ouma figured throwing away this much might please them enough to let it go for the moment.

“We’re finally done?” Momota asked, standing up and stretching.

“Mhm,” Ouma hummed in agreement and stretched his arms out, making grabbing motions like a baby would at Momota. “Pick me up,” he whined. “I’m tired of sitting on this floor.”

“Ever thought of trying to stand on your own?” Momota said, looking at him pointedly.

Ouma stared back at him with a blank face. “Are you saying that you think I can walk? Trust me Momota-chan, if I could walk, I would be doing it by now. It’s so rude to just say something like that, as if I haven’t already tried on my own.”

“Listen, all I’m saying is that if you put your heart into doing something, you can overcome anything that stands in your way! Even if it is something you don’t think you can overcome, if you have enough faith and believe in yourself, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a way to do anything you want to,” Momota said, smiling. Ouma looked at Momota as he smiled. His smile wasn’t fake, it wasn’t mocking, in fact, it was the brightest thing in the room.

“Ugh, you're an even bigger idiot than I thought. What an unrealistic way of thinking. Nothing happens just because you want it to.”

“If you keep thinking like that, then nothing will. You're a man, you can't just admit defeat so easily!”

“It's not admitting anything, it’s just knowing what you can do and what you can't do. It's logical, there's no fairy tale aspects to it. You can or you can not. Of course, I can do anything, but that's because I’m me, and not because of any bullshit reasons like you're saying.”

“Whatever, man. If you want to keep denying what I'm saying then go for it,” Momota said, resigned. “What are we doing with this bag?” Momota asked, changing the subject.

“Just give it to one of the nurses, any one of them will do.”

“Alright, will do. Try to keep your room clean, won’t you? It’s not worth it to put in this much work just for you to throw your trash on the floor again.”

“We’ll see about that. I might just have to do it on purpose if it made you that mad.”

“I won’t help you again.”

“You’ll do what I say.”

Momota picked the bag up and left the room, giving it to one of the nurses before heading back to his own room before dinner time.

* * *

“I’m not hungry,” Ouma whined out as Amami tried to get him to eat his food.

“C’mon, you barely ate anything for breakfast or lunch, you have to eat something today.”

“Nuh-uh, I had some of the rice earlier,” Ouma replied.

“Yeah, but you never eat the soup,” Amami complained, trying to push the spoon into Ouma’s hand.

Ouma pushed his hand away. “There’s not even anything nutritious about soup, nothing will happen if I don’t eat it. Miso soup is just a bunch of sodium, with a little bit of protein, I don’t get how you can eat it everyday. Rice isn’t the best source of nutrients either. Nothing about the meal we’re getting here screams, ‘get better.’ In fact, everyone would probably be better off _not_ having a bucket and a half of sodium three times a day everyday.”

“What are you going to say next Ouma-kun, that the nurses secretly are trying to kill us with high blood pressure?” Amami laughed at Ouma, seemingly joking about the entire matter. “This isn’t a conspiracy show, this is a hospital.”

“Jeez, are everyone’s memories really that short term?”

“No, I know what you’re trying to say, but you haven’t exactly been trying to associate yourself with anyone either. Nothing is going to get better if we’re all trying to do our own separate things instead of working together. So for right now, until everyone wants to come together, this is the way things will be.”

Momota looked uncomfortable with the argument they were having while Akamatsu just looked plain lost.

“Erm, is there something you guys need help with, or…?” She piped up, seeing the tension at the table rising.

“No, it’s nothing, let’s just...let’s just go back to eating, okay?” Amami said, looking exasperated with Ouma.

* * *

After dinner, Ouma was back in his room, working on a note for Saihara when his nurse walked in with blankets bundled in her arms.

“We’re going to change your sheets!” She said with enthusiasm. As she walked over, Ouma calmly switched the paper he was writing on, making sure that he did not seem suspicious by writing nonsense on the next page instead of drawing on it. It was better to keep the consistency.

His nurse looked at what he was doing as she walked over and placed the sheets on his nightstand. “Writing a diary?” She asked him, laughing a bit.

“I guess so,” he admitted. “It’s just random poems and stuff like that.”

“Oh, well that’s nice, you should let me see them sometime,” she said. She went over to him and picked him up, putting him in his wheelchair. “Just try to keep your room clean from now on, it was awfully nice of Momota-kun to help clean up earlier.”

“No promises,” he said.

She just sighed and started to change his blankets. Ouma prayed that she wouldn’t notice the things that she shoved under the mattress. As long as she was just changing the sheets like she said she was, and not flipping the mattress over, there was a good chance they could avoid her attention. Admittedly, the pill bottle was also a bright orange, and he was regretting not throwing it out earlier when he had the chance to.

As she tore off the white sheet from his bed, she picked up the other white sheet she had brought with her from. When she picked it up, she simply placed it on the bed turning back to the pile that she had brought with her.

“I brought a little present for you!” She said, picking up the clothes and unfolding them from the pile. “But you have to be quiet, you can’t tell anyone I’m giving you things they’re not getting.”  

“It’s...clothes?” He asked, looking at them.

“Yeah! Do you recognize them?” She asked, smiling wide.

He was starting to get a headache looking at the clothes. It was the same white as the sheet she had brought in, which helped disguise it with the sheets. At the collar it was frayed and the entire thing looked almost crudely put together. The shirt was held together by metal clasps on the right side of the shirt.  The middle of it had buttons that were actual buttons, like the kind you would see on a crudely made sock bunny. The whole outfit gave Ouma a vibe of childishness and he grit his teeth, feeling his headache increase exponentially. It felt so much like something he would wear that he hated it.

“Is this some of my clothes before coming here?” He asked.

“Yeah, it was what you were wearing before we brought you here. I had it all stitched up and fixed for you in secret. Remember, we can’t talk about the gift I’m giving you anywhere else. What happens in this room stays in this room, right?” She laughed at her own joke.

“Sure, if that’s what you want, Nurse-chan.”

She went over to the chair that he kept in the corner of his room and brought it over to the door, pushing the back of it under the doorknob.

“Why are you blocking off the door?” He said, starting to get an even weirder feeling about this.  

“Oh, well, it would be bad if one of the other patients walked in me giving you your gift. Like I said, this has to stay between us,” she tried to explain to him.

“It’s just a shirt right?” He asked.

“Oh, yes. There’s nothing really special here, just thought the shirt would be a nice little gift,” she said, smiling as she walked over to him. She put the shirt in his hands, forcing his hands to curl over the soft fibers as she looked him in the eyes. “Go ahead, try them on,” she said, trying to nudge him into doing it himself.

He looked at the clothes in his hands staring at them as his vision started to grow blurry and his breathing picked up in pace. He shakily pulled his shirt off of his head and watched as the nurse nodded, excited at seeing him about to put on her gift. The shirt was easy enough to slip on and fit him quite well.

“Well? How does it feel?” She asked, adjusting it a bit on him.

How _did_ it feel on him?

“It feels…” For once, Ouma was at a loss for words at how to describe how he was feeling. Not to mention his vision was swimming increasingly in front of him, making it even harder for him to focus on his own emotions. He felt, for lack of better words, disorientated.

“Doesn’t it just feel perfect on you? The stitching is such a fine job, one of her best if you don’t mind me saying, and the whole outfit really suits you. I have the pants you used to wear too, but I figured we could save those for another day,” she said, ethusatsically jumping up and down and making a low excited noise out of her mouth. “Ah! I’m so glad I managed to get to give this to you as a gift.”

Ouma struggled to get a hold of himself as the nurse pulled out her phone and snapped a few quick pictures of him.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Ouma asked, or tried to, he wasn’t sure if he was actually asking it or just thinking it. If he was saying it, it was probably so slurred it would be hard to make out anyway. His entire body momentary felt like it wasn’t his before it started to settle down to something still bad, but definitely more manageable.

“Just taking a few pictures, don’t worry. I just think you look cute in your gift. Here, look,” she said and showed him the phone screen. “Don’t you think you look so adorable?”

No, he couldn’t judge, his vision was still too bad, but he was sure it did look good on him. It was a nice contrast to his dark colored hair and worked well with his pale skin. He felt as if it was missing something though, and he brought his hand up to tug at the ragged collar, clumsily pulling it up over the area of bare skin. The shirt fell back down though and he groaned weakly, trying to shove it back up before the nurse took his hand into her own.

“Oh, now honey, it will all be okay. Don’t worry about that now. Here, I think you’ve had enough of this, lets get you back into your other clothes. I can’t leave this here, unfortunately, but I’m sure you understand, right?”

Good, let her take it away. Now that he was becoming more grounded by the minute, he felt sharp pain in his body and took a gasp of air in, startling the nurse who rushed in to help him take off the shirt. He pushed her away as he started to shake. He managed to get down from one event, only to be greeted by the pain of another.

“Shit!” She swore lightly under her breath. She rushed over to the sheets she had brought and took out another hidden item that Ouma recognized as a syringe.

“No,” he protested weakly, but knew he was at the nurse’s mercy at this point. He swallowed, the pain was growing to a horrendous high and Ouma knew he could do nothing to physically stop her. He knew he shouldn’t have trusted her, knew he shouldn’t have put on that damn shirt when she was being so sneaky about it. She even locked the door for fucks sake!

“Shhh, I’m sure this will all be over in a second if you just let me help you,” she tried to soothe him, only succeeding in making him shake his head more.  

“No,” he said, but slowly growing in volume. “No! NONONONONONO!” He started to scream at the top of his lungs, making the nurse wince. She ignored his screams of protest and went over to him anyway, where he tried to push her away again.

“Get away from me!” He screamed as she tried to grab his arm. Ouma could hear pounding on the door and he could hear his nurse’s breath increase in his ear as she began sweating and abandoning all pretense of being nice. Fed up with him when he ended up hitting her face, she backhanded him, grabbing his arm in the moment that he was momentarily too shocked to do anything.

“Stop it!” He gave one last loud cry before she plunged the syringe into his arm, and he instantly began to feel numb. “No,” he said softly, the strength drained out of him. The pain was fading now, but everything still felt so out of place. “No,” he said, even quieter as his eyes started to droop, his head lolling to the side.

He felt her pulling his shirt off hastily, and putting his other one back on, folding it up with speed and slipping it back into the pile of sheets. He could hear vague pounding at the door, but everything was starting to become blurry again, starting to become duler.

He could only make out the figure of his nurse going over to the door and the pounding stopped, leaving nothing left but the silence even though he could see the nurse’s jaw move as she talked through the door.

Ouma’s body felt like it was drowning, and he felt as if he should know why, as if he should know that he’s felt this before. He was sure if Momota was here, he would tell Ouma that he could fight off the drug she had given him, but he wasn’t here, only Ouma was, and Ouma knew it was no use. There was nothing he could do so he passed out, message he was supposed to be writing to Saihara be damned.   

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I'm sorry this chapter was shorter than normal. Hopefully it's longer next week.  
> Everyone in this fic is like 90% percent salt at this point, there's no escaping the saltiness they get from eating so much soup smh  
> Also, maybe I'll start titling chapters? I don't know, we'll see what I plan on doing, but I really want to title certain chapters things in the future.  
> Thank you very much for reading and I hope you liked the chapter!  
> Things are coming...soon...


	6. No Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT: Please read the chapter end notes for a possible tw in this chapter. I'm putting it at the end because I don't want to spoil what happens in this chapter, so once you've read it you can just hop back up to the top. I will say it is nothing like non-con or anything else like that, so if that is what you are fearing the tw to be, don't worry, it's not. Thank you very much!!

When Ouma woke up, he was greeted with a tilted room followed with the sudden face of his nurse. Adrenaline shot through him and he had to suppress a gasp.  

“What the hell did you do?” He asked, putting his hand up to his head and cradling it, trying to relieve the massive headache he had.

“Oh, thank God you’re okay,” she said, breathing out a sigh of relief.

“Okay? What the fuck do you mean, ‘okay?!’” He exclaimed, glaring at her.

“Did you...lie to me?” She looked at him with a hint of glee in her eyes. It reminded him of someone off their rocker. “Did you lie to the doctors?”

“Lie? To you? To the doctor?” He asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, that’s bullshit and I know it,” she said, holding his gaze. “You lied about not getting headaches, didn’t you?”

“No I didn’t,” he responded.

“Yes, you did. You shouldn’t have lied about that. You shouldn’t be lying at all for a matter of fact.

“I don’t lie...I strategically edit what I say,” he said calmly. “Besides, everyone lies. There’s no way around it. Not all lies hurt; it’s a necessary evil sometimes. But I don’t lie,” he lied. He looked the nurse in the eyes and squinted. “I hate liars.”  

“Oh, every time you lie, you show me you haven’t really changed.”

“Haven’t changed? Is that something bad?”

“Sometimes,” she said, her voice gentle and her smile sad. “Sometimes…not always though. Can you try? Can you promise me you’ll try to not lie? Just as I promised to make sure nothing happened to you.”

“I don’t have anything to do with your promise. It’s not my problem you made some kind crazy promise,” he said.

“But you do. You have everything to do with the promise. It’s about you. How could you say it’s not something that concerns you when it’s about you?”

It wasn’t that it didn’t concern him—it concerned him immensely. It was just that her _promise_ wasn’t his concern to hold up. It wasn’t something that should held over _his_ head.

“Well then you should bring that up with whoever you made your promise with,” he shot back.

She averted her eyes away from him, fidgeting with her outfit slightly in her hands. She looked down into her shirt and mumbled, “I can’t.”

“Huh?” Ouma asked. “What do you mean you ‘can’t’”

“I can’t tell them, I can’t tell _him._ ”

Okay, Ouma was trying, he really was. He was trying to slowly apply what Saihara had told him to try, but he couldn’t do it anymore.

“Well then, tell me who it is and I’ll tell them myself. Does that make it better?” He asked, a slight tip of annoyance on the tip of his tongue.

“No! You’ll probably tattle on me! My gift was supposed to be private, you can’t tell them about that, but you will, so you can’t tell anyone.”

“Of course I’ll tell them about your gift. You _were_ just trying to be thoughtful and kind, weren’t you?”

The nurse shakily nodded her head. “Yes.”

“Then there shouldn’t be a problem with telling people that aren’t patients, right?”

“No, there’s...there’s still problems with that,” she admitted, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to...I shouldn’t have taken the outfit yet, I’m sorry. But you,” she changed her tone, getting intense, “you shouldn’t have lied like that.”  

“How many times do I have tell you, I didn’t lie. That was the first time I’ve ever felt anything like that.”

She let tears fall from her eyes as she stood up. “I have to go help the nurses let everyone else out now. They practically shut down this floor of the hospital. I’ll have someone come and bring you to an early lunch,” she said and left the room.

Ouma took the first look at his clock that he had since he had woken up and felt the tension in him rise. It was the next day and was, as his nurse had alluded to, past breakfast time, but not exactly what would be normal lunch time. He groaned, rubbing his head again, this time more in frustration then pain.

What actually happened last night? All he could remember for the most part was that the entire world was spinning, his body going in and out of consciousness, the panic as everything around him seemed to become further and further away even the pounding on the door.  What had she done to him? Had she even done anything to him, or was it a problem he was having on his own that had nothing to do with her? No, that was stupid. He may have been having problems before the nurse had given that to him, but everything went downhill fast once he’d first laid eyes on it. It was too convenient to ignore.

A knock on his door brought him out of his thoughts.

“Ouma-kun?” He heard Amami’s voice ask as he slowly opened the door.

“Amami-chan! There you are, finally. Jeez, what took you so long to get here?”

Amami walked in, followed by Momota and Akamatsu as well. Seeing Momota come wasn’t that weird, but why was Akamastsu here? “Sorry, they just let us out now. They kept us locked up all the rest of the day yesterday after something started to happen in your room.”

“Are you okay?” Akamatsu asked. “You were screaming pretty loudly.”

Ouma nodded. “Yeah, I guess I’m fine, thanks.”

“What happened?” Momota questioned him.

“I don’t really know,” Ouma said back. It was a lie of course, he knew exactly what happened.

“Are you even feeling up to eating something?” Amami asked.

Truth be told, no, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to do anything right now. “Sure I am!” He said, nodding his head. “Let’s go.”

“No,” Akamatsu said when Amami went to get Ouma into the wheelchair. “I mean, of course you can go to dinner, but before that, please just tell me what’s been going on with you three. I know there’s something happening that you don’t want me to know of. Please, just tell what’s going on. Can’t I help or do something? _Anything_?”

“No,” Ouma simply said.

Momota ruffled the back of his hair. “We really shouldn’t get more people involved.”

“There’s nothing to be involved with, you idiot,” Ouma said, bristling a bit.

“You know I don’t believe that for one minute, right?” Akamatsu said, pouting at Ouma.

“It’s the truth.”

She groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “If you don’t let me in on what you three are doing I’ll-”

“You’ll what?”Ouma cut her off, glaring at her. “Nothing happened, nothing has _ever_ happened, and nothing _will_ happen. So do as you want, but know we haven’t been doing anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t have to be something wrong! It just has to be...something.”

“Well you’re looking in the wrong place then,” Ouma said cooly.

Amami sighed, speaking up for the first time. “Alright, let’s just drop this for right now and go to lunch. Come on.”

“Oh, also, your face is looking pretty...uh…” Momota told him, gesturing to his own eyes as a reference.

“Huh?” Ouma let out a noise of confusion and reached up to touch the area that Momota had been pointing to on his. When he pulled it back, he saw that there was makeup smeared on it and groaned.

Momota snickered. “Lookin’ good.”

“I’m glad somebody finally agrees with me,” Amami added, sarcastically.

Ouma groaned. “Just shut up.”  

* * *

When they got to lunch, Amami and Momota went to go get their lunch plus Ouma’s. Akamatsu decided that she wasn’t going to sit with them today, citing that she just “needed a day with the other girls for once.”

“Well,” Amami said as he put their food down, “to be fair, she has been sitting at a table off all males for the entire time we’ve been here.”

“Oh, you know damn well that she’s not going to sit over there because of that,” Ouma replied.

“I know, just saying it’s not the worst excuse in the world.”

“Watch her just gossip about us to the other girls,” Ouma said bitterly, watching as the table she was at erupted into laughter. “Ugh.”

“To be fair, we haven’t been the best about not acting suspicious around her,” Momota said.

“We? I haven’t done anything,” Ouma said, smiling. “I think you forget that it’s you who has been doing things, not us.”

“Oh, well then at least Amami and I.”

“I haven’t done anything either,” Amami told him.

“What do you mean you haven’t done anything either? What were you doing up that night then?”

“Walking over to Ouma’s room. Also, he’s right, I’m surprised nobody woke up from all that.”

“Oh, come on, give me a break.”

“Nope,” Ouma teased. “There’s a new law that says you must point out the idiotic things idiots do.”

“Why are you always so fucking rude?”

“Um,” a nurse said, approaching the table as Ouma glared at her.

“And what do you want? Can’t you see you’re interrupting our lunch?”

“Oh, it has to do with your lunch,” she said. “From now on, you’re having a change in your lunch.”

“Just me?” Ouma said suspiciously.

“You don’t like the miso soup, right?”

It wasn’t that he didn’t like miso soup, it was just that he didn’t trust the miso soup from here. “No, I like it, I just don’t always like to eat it first. Save the best for last and all that crap, y’know?”

“Ah, well we’d still like to change your meals if that’s okay.”

She said that as if she was giving him a choice. “But why? I like my meals,” he said, whining.

“We just feel like it would be better for you to maybe eat something different,” she said, fidgeting in place a little bit.

“Like what?” He asked.

“Oh, we’ll just switch your soup. You can keep eating the rice.”

“But I don’t want to switch my so-”

“It’s not really that up for debate,” she told him, smiling at him, but Ouma could tell it was forced and fake. “I’ll go and grab it for you now.”

She could have cut that conversation off a lot earlier, Ouma knew he had little voice in the matter. They were going to change his soup whether he liked it or not.

She soon came back and with her, as promised, was a different kind of soup. It looked strikingly close to miso soup, but it had some noodles and some small bits of chicken and carrots floating around in it.

“Chicken noodle?” He asked her, looking at the soup.

“Yes,” she replied, placing it down in front of him and taking his miso soup away in return. “Here, why don’t you eat it now, while I’m still here and tell me how you like it.”

“I don’t like chicken noodle soup,” he grumbled.

“Oh. Can you at least try it first? We have a really good chef here who is very good at making soups, so I’m sure it’s better than your average chicken noodle soup you’ve had before in the past.”

“It’s just chicken noodle soup, how special can it be?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she said with a small laugh. Right.

“What if I don’t feel like I’m in the mood for soup right now?”

He could see the frustration growing on the nurse’s face. “Well that’s too bad, you’re going to eat the soup and tell me how you like it,” she said with finality, picking up the spoon and lifting it up to his mouth. “Open up,” she demanded.

Ouma glared at her, keeping his mouth tightly shut, even as she prodded the spoon against his closed mouth.

“Why won’t you just eat the damn soup?” She said, voice frustrated.

“Not to interrupt, but do you think they have any other soups they could make?” Amami spoke up, catching the nurse’s attention.

“For you? Yeah, I’m sure there’s a few soups back there that I could give you.”

“Would it be possible for you to get one for me?”

“I’m kind of busy right now, if you couldn’t see,” she said, pressing the spoon onto Ouma’s mouth harder.

“Alright, how about this. You get me a new soup and I try to talk Ouma-kun into eating the soup you gave him. Sounds fair?” Amami proposed.

The nurse sighed, nodding her head as she slowly lowered the spoon back into the bowl.

“Fine, but you better get him to eat at least one spoon full by the time I come back.”

She walked away briskly, going away to get Amami his soup. Ouma pushed the soup towards Amami who laughed and pushed it back towards Ouma.  

“Here, why don’t you just eat the noodles and not the broth if you really don’t like it that much.”

“But I don’t want to eat even that,” Ouma whined.

“Well, can you at least just have one spoonful like that? She probably won’t bug you if she comes back and you at least ate some of it.”

“Ugh,” Ouma groaned, picking up the spoon and doing as Amami suggested. By eating only the noodles he should be safe, but there was still a small portion of the broth that he would have to eat anyway when it came down to it. It was unavoidable, there was really no way that he would be able to not get a spoonful without a little bit on it each time, but at least this was minimizing his consumption.  

He stuck the spoonful into his mouth, cringing a bit at the taste. At least with the chicken noodle soup, he could eat it like this to please the nurses; with the miso soup there was very little you could do besides just eating it the way it was.

When the nurse came back with a new soup for Amami, she smiled when she saw the spoon in his mouth.

“Oh, I’m so proud of you!” She said happily. “We’re going to just switch you to that from now on, okay? Just have someone tell the chef the meal is for you and I’m sure he’d be happy to grab you your own custom meal. That goes for you too, if you want to permanently switch your soup as well,” she said towards Amami, who nodded in understanding. “Alright, well, I guess I’ll leave you guys alone now. Thank you very much for getting him to eat some of the soup.”  

Once she left, Ouma pulled the spoon out of his mouth, glaring at it as if it betrayed him. Next to him, Amami pushed the soup around with his spoon.

“What is this?” He said, a hint of horrified confusion in his voice.

The other two leaned over to look at what Amami was looking at.

“Is that asparagus? In a soup?” Momota asked, beginning to sound scared himself.

“It’s bright green, what is this shit?”Ouma said, taking the bowl from Amami and watched as it sluggishly moved around in the bowl as he tipped it from side to side in curiosity.  

“I think I’ll just switch back to miso if they don’t have anything else,” Amami grumbled, pushing the soup away from him with disgust.

“I don’t blame you,” Momota said, feeling sick just looking at it.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s Mountain Dew flavored and that’s why it’s so bright green,” Ouma proposed.

“If that’s the case that’s even worse,” Amami said, glaring at him, making Ouma laugh.

* * *

When Ouma got back to his room, his nurse came into his room, followed by a doctor.

“S-Surprise visit!” His nurse said, a bit of a waiver in her voice. He supposed that was understandable, the only reason the doctor was probably here was because of what happened last night.

“Oh? And to what do I owe the honor of this ‘surprise visit?’” He said, glaring at the nurse.

The doctor stepped in for her, making sure the nurse didn’t answer. “We’re just going to make sure you’re okay.”

“Okay,” Ouma said, just wanting this to be over with already. There was very little that he could do to get out of this one; that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try of course.

The doctor put on her glasses, looking at the sheet in front of her. “Do you remember what happened last night?” She asked first.

For the most part, yes, he did remember what happened last night. Of course, there were still little gaps in his memory, and the end of the entire situation was still very muddled for him, but he was able to recall basically everything about last night. “Yup.”

“Great,” the doctor said, not noticing the way that the nurse twitched behind her. “Well then,” she said, pen position over her sheet, looking at Ouma slightly from over the top of her glasses, “go ahead and tell me what happened last night.”

“Well it all started when Nurse-chan came into my room late yesterday and told me that she wanted to change my sheets. But then she pulled out this shirt and it really made my head all dizzy. She made me take off my shirt and-”

The doctor cut him off with a loud sigh as she wrote something down. “Ouma-san, please don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I really don’t have time for your games right now. Other people might find them endearing or charming or whatever the hell else they saw in you, but I’m not up for it right now. My job is to help you not go through something like that again, so please just stop giving me fake information to go off of. Your nurse has already told us her side and it matches up with a lot of the evidence, so just tell me the damn truth already.”

“Okay, well...I was.”

The doctor groaned and wrote another frustrated note on her paper. “Stop lying. They couldn’t do a single thing right with you guys this time, could they,” she grumped, shaking her head as she looked at her clipboard. “Is there anything else you’d like to add to this? Maybe the truth?” She asked clicking her pen on the clipboard a few times, looking at him with anger.

“Fine, if you don’t want to believe me, then don’t. It’s not my fault if you get bad information.”

There was an odd part of Ouma that was half happy and half annoyed that she didn’t believe him. Happy because it was fun to watch her try to deny his claims and yet annoying because she _was_ denying his claims, which, for once, were true.

“I’m sure your nurse told us all we need to know. I’m going to give you some pills and I expect you to take one every night. I’ll get those to you by tomorrow. I didn’t expect this to happen, all the staff that would be able to help with this have already gone home for the night, so we have no choice but to wait until tomorrow to give you anything.”

“Aw, what a shame,” he said in a mocking tone, watching as the doctor stood up and left the room as quick as possible.

When she left, his nurse turned to glare at him. “Were you trying to get me trouble?”

“What do you think?” he responded with a grin.

“You may not believe it, but I really am trying to help you,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“Yeah, cause all you did last night _really_ helped me. The most you did to “help” me last night was when you knocked me out.”

“Oh don’t be selfish about this situation. It’s my ass on the line. Can’t you just keep your mouth shut for once?”

“Well, it’s not as if she believed me anyway, so you’re pretty safe for right now.”

“No, I’m not!” The nurse shouted, her face red from how flustered she was over the situation.

“Bleh, well then it’s your fault anyway. There’s nothing that I did wrong. Didn’t you want me to start to tell the truth anyway? So why is it that when I tell the truth that you get so mad about it?”

“Seeing and dealing with you are two entirely different things,” she said, glaring at him. “Why are you so annoying?”

“I’m not annoying, you just don’t know what you want and are taking it out on poor ol’ me.”

They glared at each other before it was cut short by a knock on the door. His nurse quickly made her expression as neutral as possible before telling whoever was there to come in. Ouma remained glaring right at the nurse anyway.

“Erm, can I speak with you for a minute, please?” The doctor said, making a motion towards the nurse, trying to get her to go out into the hall.

After a moment’s hesitation, she complied and walked out into the hallway to speak with the doctor. They must have been talking extremely quietly, because not even his superior hearing and the too thin walls helped him find out what they were saying. All he ended up hearing in the end were hushed whispers, just far enough that it bugged him that he didn’t know what they were saying.

So he stayed seated in is bed, waiting for the two to come back into the room to tell him who knows what at this point.

When the door opened again, it was only the nurse who walked in. “I've got to go now, but we will continue our talk later,” she promised before exiting again, leaving Ouma to do whatever he wanted.

Ouma instantly began to think about Saihara and how he'd left Saihara hanging basically two nights in a row. The night before wasn't much of a conversation and he didn't send anything last night. He hoped that Saihara had just been patient and hadn't sent anything over that he wasn't able to see last night.

There was still time until night time so he took out the piece of paper he had been writing to Saihara the previous night and reread what he had written. He bit his lip at the note and tore it up, bringing out a new piece of paper to write the note on.

**Saihara-chan,**

**Sorry for not messaging you last night, something came up. How have you been? Have you seen your nurse lately? Want to know what mine did to me last night? She’s super creepy and fake and I hate her.**

**-You Know Who**

It wasn’t the best message, but it wasn’t the worst either. He wanted to make sure that Saihara was still going to be there to listen before he did anything more.

Sighing, with nothing left to do, he looked at the door, wishing for someone to come in and relieve him of his boredom. He knew it wouldn’t happen though; there would be no games or chats with Amami, no clean up with Momota, there was nothing for him. Come to think of it, nobody ever came to visit him really unless he asked. Perhaps Amami was right, he was just doing his own thing. Not that that was bad necessarily, but it also made him feel a small tinge of pain knowing that there were probably some true, small budding friendships that had been formed while he lay in his bed writing letters to somebody on the other side of the door who may or may not even be who he says he is.  

It was his own fault though, that no one wanted to come and see him. He didn’t participate with other people as much as he should if he wanted to get them to help him. He insisted on hiding behind a lie, a lie that hid him behind his perceived weakness in the eyes of everyone. It still made him angry, to think that they knew that he could not do much, but yet no one batted an eye when he was left alone for hours on end. Nobody tried to get him to come out and get him to talk to the others. They all just left him in here, for dead, only rushing over to help when they thought he was dying. It was fine though, he was better when he was just by himself as it was. He had more time to do what he wanted, not what other people wanted him to do, and didn’t have to bother to keep himself presentable to everyone. This was nice, this was peaceful, he tried to convince himself. Yes, this was everything he could ever want.

He didn’t want others, he didn't need others, he didn’t need to find the way out of this place for the sake of the others. The only thing he needed was to achieve his own goals and not worry about what would happen to the others; if he could convince himself that that was true, then he figured that everything would work out okay for him.

He put the clipboard under his chin and stared at the clock on the nightstand, willing the hours to go by faster. He hated being bored.

* * *

When dinner came, he found that the nurses were enforcing the new soup rule. Akamatsu once again refused to sit with them, claiming that just for this day she was going to be sitting with the girls as they had been talking all day; she didn’t want to just leave them hanging once it came to dinner time so she figured she would just go and sit with them for the rest of the day.

It was fair, but it still made Ouma suspicious towards her and what her own goals would be after she confronted them earlier.

He did what Amami had told him to do earlier and drained the broth before taking a bite out of his soup. He would rather not eat it at all, but he could see some of the nurses watching him with not so subtle glances in his direction so he allowed them to feel as if they had won just so that he was able to continue to have some power over them.

Once dinner was over and he was returned to his room, with nothing else to do, and feeling oddly tired, he trusted himself enough to take a small nap. He knew that his body was accustomed to taking such naps and calculated he would wake up when he needed to.

He turned off the lights as a pretense to keep the nurses away and shut his eyes.

* * *

The next time he woke up, he felt a small twinge of panic go through him as he snapped his head over to look at the clock. He breathed out a sigh of relief when he noticed that it was about to be 11 P.M. and pressed his lights on with the remote. The lights under the crack of his door were off, so that meant that all was going according to plan.

He took the clipboard off of the desk and unclipped the hidden note, standing up and stretching, wincing as some of his joints cracked painfully from sitting all day. He looked the note over quickly seeing that it was all correct before reaching over to grab the pen that he kept on the nightstand.

He walked over to the door and opened it, not expecting the sight that awaited him. There, between the closed metal door and the nurse’s station, was a body, blood flowing out of the wound that originated from the top of the head, laying face down over what was most likely the same shirt he was forced to try on yesterday. His breathing pick up as he saw that in the body’s hand was a hat, grasped tightly, almost unseeable in the dark hospital wing.

His brain began to get foggy as a headache instantly plagued him as he stepped forward. It felt as if he was in a scene from a movie or a tv show, slowly approaching the body, getting more and more horrified as he stepped closer and closer to the body. This was a joke, right? A nightmare?

When he got to the body, he slowly knelt down, trying not to pass out as his chest became tight, his entire body feeling as if there were a crushing force applied to it all at once. It was just so...surreal.

He shakily lifted the body’s head up, gazing into the dead and horrified eyes of his nurse. He released the head with horror and felt sick when it splattered face down back into the puddle of blood beneath it. She was even warm in his hands when he held her; she was killed recently.

His entire vision swam as he tried to stand back up, wobbling in the process. Despite finding it horrifying, he couldn’t stop looking at her body, taking in every aspect of it, no matter how unneeded it possibly was.

He bent over and grabbed the hat out of her hands, being able to take it with just a little tug. Seeing the hat made him feel like he had the previous night, even more so as he could also see the shirt, which didn’t help him at all to calm down. He clutched the hat to his chest, frozen in place as his mind worked a million times harder as his sense were overtaken by everything happening around him.

Suddenly, footsteps echoed in the darkness, like a hammer on iron and he froze. He slowly moved his eyes to his right, still half bent over his dead nurse, the hat clutched in his hand as if it was his life line. With his horrible vision, he could barely make out the black shadow stepping closer to him with every step it took.

He willed his body to do something, _anything,_ but he again felt powerless, as if he was no longer in control of his own body; he was truly disconnected from this world.

He could do nothing but surrender as he felt the familiar prick of a needle like when his once alive nurse sedated him last night. He didn’t struggle to stay upright, allowing his body to fall to the ground, trying to cushion his fall as much as he could with his body that was still too in shock to react. He was vaguely aware that there was pain budding in his head from where he had fallen, but he couldn’t process much of anything. His senses were overloaded; the headaches he had gotten at the start of all this was nothing compared to the way that it had escalated.

The last thing he saw before he passed out was the nurse, laying with her head facing the direction of his feet as they laid down, side by side. He welcomed the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Character death and a bit of graphic description relating to the dead body. 
> 
> *Roblox death noise* OOF  
> Anyway, this chapter was a bitch to edit, so please tell me if anything is horribly wrong with it that I missed.  
> Thank you all for reading, commenting, kudoing, all of that stuff! Have an amazing rest of your day!


	7. Say Goodbye to the Old World

_One of Ouma’s hands came into his vision. It hovered over a desk that was peppered with stab marks. A finger on the hand oozed with fresh blood as he held it out in front of him. In his other hand, barely visible to his eye’s view, the weight and shine of a knife made itself known. Across the desk, a person sat down in front of him and reached for Ouma’s hands, gently grasping them in his own as he began to clean and bandage the finger._

_Ouma could tell they were saying something, but the world around him was muted, as if he had earplugs pressed firmly into his ears and his head was underwater. He could feel his lips moving, could feel the sting of pain that originated from the wound on his finger, but he could not move anything himself._

_The hands holding his made quick work of bandaging the wound, making sure to not put too much pressure onto the wound so as to cut off the circulation going to the finger. He flexed it a few times, trying out the way that it moved before being satisfied with the job._

_Finally, his head moved up, meeting the person in front of him head on. Everything about him seemed familiar, from the way that the dark blue hair draped down over his eyes a bit, or the way that there was a piece of hair in the middle of his head that stuck up (was that an ahoge?). But, what caught Ouma off guard the most, were the golden eyes that looked at him with such worry, yet at the same time, seemed to stare straight through him._

_His mouth was moving, as was Ouma’s own, but still no sound came out. Both of their hands were moving, but still Ouma was not doing it. Both of their bodies were working, but yet Ouma had no say in any of it. All he could do was keep his eyes glued to the never blinking golden eyes, staring past him, staring into the nothingness, staring into...the past?_

_The figure gave him a hesitant smile, and he could feel his mouth curving upwards into a smile—a genuine, hopeful smile aimed towards the future._

* * *

Ouma was getting extremely frustrated with being knocked out only to wake up to weird things.

When he woke up, he was on a bed and his headache remained, probably a product of how he hit his head on the ground. The wisps of the dream were fading quickly, despite however much that Ouma tried to grasp onto it. The lights in the room were so dimmed they might as well be off though; that helped a bit with the headache, although it didn’t assist him in trying to stay awake.

“Hey, you’re finally awake,” he heard a familiar gruff voice say.

“Momota-chan?” He asked with curiosity. “Where are we are we?” He questioned, trying to gain his bearings.

“We’re in your room, I brought you back here. How’s your head?”

Ouma touched his forehead where it hurt the most and almost brought his hand back immediately, holding back a hiss at how tender the spot was.

“It’s...fine,” he said.

“Liar. The way you reacted and that big ugly red spot on your forehead revealed the ‘painful’ truth.” Momota smiled inwardly at how quick he was able to execute such a pithy remark.  

“What are you, the fucking narrator for Pinocchio?” Ouma taunted him.

“No,” Momota said indignantly. “Can’t you be honest for once?”

“I’m always honest,” Ouma replied with a smirk. His joking was short lived, though, ended by a wave of pain rushing over him. He groaned werily. “Ugh, this week has just been going great for me, hasn’t it been?” he mumbled, saying it more to himself that to Momota.

“What were you doing out there?”

“Oh boy, on top of that, people just love to drill me, don’t they?” This time he directed it towards Momota, looking at him with judging eyes.

“I can’t be concerned about you? It’s not every day that you walk out of your room and find someone lying face down, knocked out. If you were doing what you were supposed to be doing, nothing bad would happen to you and I wouldn’t have to ‘drill you,’ would I?”

“That’s not how this place works, that’s not how anything works, you idiot. Bad things can happen to you whether you’re doing something wrong or right. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time then there’s nothing you can do about it. But the same also goes for you. If you had just stayed in your room then I wouldn’t have had to drill you either.”

Momota huffed, scowling down at Ouma. “Just answer the question. What happened to you?”

Ouma thought for a quick second before responding. “I was just trying to follow your advice,” he said. “Why am I being judged by everyone because I’m following their advice? First Nurse-chan—” he cut himself off, thinking of the memory of her dead head in his hands and the hat he had pulled out of her hands. He perked up a bit, where was that hat anyway? He looked around, finding it sitting innocently on his nightstand as if it was supposed to be there the entire time.

Momota followed his eyes, and upon seeing the hat, a look of knowing crossed his face. “Your were holding it, so I put it there for you,” he told Ouma.

Ouma reached over to the nightstand, reaching for the lightswitch and switching it to on, feeling a slight bit of regret go through him as his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden change in lighting.

He picked it up, looking at the hat, trying to avoid the large spot of dried blood that was on it; the last bits of his nurse’s life, splattered onto the hat.

“It looks like it’s very nicely made,” Momota commented, watching as Ouma felt it in his hands, memorized as he turned it around and looked at it from every angle trying to place the feeling he was getting from the hat. A feeling? A...memory?

“It seems to be,” he agreed, refocusing on the hat. Whatever material it was made out of was clearly intended to be able to withstand a lot of use and yet at the same time be as comfortable to wear as possible. There was a small star on the side of it that sparkled and reflected the light as he moved it around. “It feels...familiar,” Ouma admitted.

Momota was silent for a moment before nodding his head in agreement. “You’re right. There’s something about this hat that seems very familiar. I feel like I’ve seen it before. Maybe it’s your hat and they just managed to be able to give it back to you now?”

Ouma scowled as he looked at the hat. It couldn’t have been his; it just didn’t seem...right. “I don’t think so.”

“Where’d you even find it?” Momota asked, finally bringing up the question that Ouma had been dreading him asking since he woke up.

“She’s dead,” he told Momota, plainly.

“W-Who’s dead? You can’t just say something like that!”

“Nurse-chan.”

Momota was silent for a moment before looking at Ouma with hard eyes. “That’s not funny, Ouma-kun,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Don’t joke around like that!”

He didn’t believe Ouma then. That wasn’t surprising to Ouma if he was being honest. Ouma sighed. “Fine, don’t believe me. You’ll see when you never see her again.”

“We’re getting off-topic,” Momota said, looking at him pointedly. “What were you doing out there?”

“I already told you. Jeez, can’t idiots listen for once in their life? You said you wanted for me to try to walk on my own, am I right? Look at what your advice did to me.”

“That’s great,” Momota said, looking happy, but then quickly added, “not that you passed out in the hall, but hey, wait, why did you go out there anyway?” Momota questioned him, going from excited to looking at Ouma with suspicious eyes. “Wouldn’t it be better for you to practice walking around in your room instead in case anything happened?”

“Hmm...yes,” Ouma agreed thinking. “But then Nurse-chan came into my room and saw me and dragged me into the hall to practice out there instead. I didn’t tell her that she could do that to me, so I killed her in return.”

“That makes no sense!” Momota shouted.

“You’re right! It was a lie! There’s no way that _I_ could have killed her,” Ouma said. In all manner of gleaning he had just gotten Momota to agree to the fact that there was no possible way that Ouma could have killed her if it ever came up. Not that he expected it to. The fact that Momota didn’t even believe him when he said that his nurse was dead meant that her body, and any evidence minus Ouma’s state on the ground, must have already been taken from the scene by the time that Momota ventured into the hall.

“Why can’t you just man up and tell me why you were out there!?”  

“What was that thing you said about ‘if a man’s curious’ or something or other?” Ouma shot back. “I can’t use my own two legs to ‘go and be curious?’”

“Will you ever stop lying? What’s the actual point to it?” Momota asked him, anger seeping into his voice more than any other time.

“Why are you so set on believing that I’m lying to you?”

“Fine, if you won’t just tell me yourself, then what do you have to say about this?” Momota asked, and Ouma’s blood ran cold when he saw what Momota had picked out of his coat pocket. In Momota’s hands was a sheet of paper, not filled with Ouma’s handwriting, no, but a familiar curly handwriting.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Ouma denied, trying not look too suspicious. “Want to share what it says?” In truth, he did have no idea what it said. He knew who it was from, he just didn’t know what it said. At least Saihara didn’t have his name, so he couldn’t be exposed that way.

“I’ve already read it a few times,” Momota said and shoved the paper towards him. “Read it yourself.”

Ouma put the hat down in his lap for the moment, taking the paper that Momota was holding out to him in its place.

**Hey, are you okay? I heard lots of screaming last night through the wall and it made people over here worried, especially me when you didn’t send a message over that night... Please tell me that nothing bad happened to you.**

**-Saihara**

Ouma sighed once he finished reading the note, knowing that everyone on this side of the door knew that it had been Ouma screaming, but...why did Saihara know that it had been _Ouma_ screaming? To Saihara, shouldn’t it have been just a random person? He’d been explicitly told not to talk through the door, so there should be no way to know what Ouma sounded like. Ouma smiled; Saihara _did_ know more then he was telling Ouma. As much as that made Ouma mad on the inside, his curiosity about Saihara only grew—it would continue to grow even more until the intrigue clinging to him fell away after he discerned Saihara’s motives.

“Sure sounds like whoever wrote the note knew they would be talking to you,” Momota said. “Considering you’re the only one who was screaming last night.”

“But it doesn’t _have_ to be me. I’m sure there was a lot of uproar after I was screaming. For example, I could hear some pounding at my door along with some shouting. That doesn’t mean that this ‘Saihara-chan’ was necessarily talking about me.”

“Yeah, there was some yelling, but there wasn’t anyone who _screamed_ like you,” Momota countered. “You screamed as if you were going to die. As if you _were_ dying.”  

While Momota was talking, Ouma stole a look at his clock. It was almost 4 A.M., that meant that it was definitely too late to send Saihara a message back telling him not to worry. That is, if Momota will ever let him out of his sight again at night. He was pretty dead set on believing that it was Ouma the note was referring to, and with good reason for once, and Ouma felt as if there was very little he could do to stop Momota from doing something in the future to mess with things. If he intercepted a note from Saihara that Ouma really needed to read, it could have horrible consequences; he was probably on thin ice with Saihara as it was right now. He had to stop this now, no matter how much it killed him inside to do so.

“Come closer,” Ouma hissed and once Momota came close enough to the bed, Ouma grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, ignoring Momota startled noises, pulling him so that his ear was next to Ouma’s mouth. “Listen, before we go any further, tell anyone about the notes or this conversation and you’re dead, got it?”

He felt Momota give a shaky nod, trying hard to move his head with the way that Ouma was holding his shirt down. “Good. As long as you understand that, then the rest should be easy. I started to receive notes like this from under the door some time ago and have been talking to him since. Don’t talk back to him, leave that to me, I have a plan, okay?”

“Who is he?” Momota asked back.

“Who really knows,” Ouma replied. It was something he’d oft feared about Saihara. He truly could be anyone, could be someone claiming to be a different person than what they already were. But whenever he felt those feelings of distrust, feelings of trust and familiarity always came rushing up to aveil his fears.

 _In fact…_ Ouma thought, taking a glance down at the hat in his lap, it was similar to the feelings he got when he looked at the hat. Was it possible this item was somehow connected to Saihara? That would make sense, considering he’s never seen it before and that would hint that it belonged to someone he hadn’t seen yet. That or it was another one of the “gifts” from before they got stuck in here that they just couldn’t remember. Probably both if Ouma had to truly guess.

“So do you trust him?”

“Hm...I don’t trust anyone, but he hasn’t given me a solid reason to never talk to him again yet.”

Momota struggled against his grip, the way that Ouma was having him bend down made him uncomfortable. “Let me go, I swear I won’t run, I want to hear what you have to say,” Momota said, hands reaching up to grip Ouma’s hands in his own, trying to uncurl the hands from his shirt.

With a huff, Ouma let go, letting Momota stand up straight to stretch his back, wincing as he heard Momota’s back crack. “Ugh, that hurt,” Momota groaned out as he put his hand on his back.

“It’s not my fault that you’re too tall,” Ouma whined pathetically when Momota gave him an accusatory glare.  

“No, but what is your fault is the way you made me bend down like that, jeez,” Momota said, pausing for a second before asking, “So what are you going to do from now on?”

“Keep sending letters to him. It sucks that I can’t send one right now, he won’t get it. He only wants to talk until 1, so…” Ouma trailed off, flicking his eyes towards the clock.

Momota ruffled the back of his hair and gave a sigh in frustration. “Yeah, it’s too late to send one back.”

Ouma was a little scared of what would happen if he didn’t send a note back to Saihara soon. While his suspicion of Saihara had risen, so had his determination to learn more about Saihara, to understand him better and perhaps better understand the situation they were in. He wouldn’t be able to do either if Saihara stopped sending notes because Ouma stopped responding.

“I don’t know when I can send one back now.”

“Tomorrow?” Momota suggested.

Ouma would probably send one back tomorrow, sure, but he didn’t want Momota to know that. “Who knows. Whenever I feel like it,” he responded, trying to keep it as vague as possible.

“How have you even been getting out their to send the notes?” Momota questioned him after thinking about what Ouma had said. To be able to pass notes under the door meant that he would have to get up out of his bed, there was no way around that.

“To pass the notes I—”

“Give them to Amami-kun, right?!” Momota accused, cutting a frustrated Ouma off. “That’s why he was “walking” to your room the other night isn’t it!” Momota exclaimed as if he was sure he had known what the answer was, causing Ouma to sigh. Why even ask him if Momota was just going to cut him off and jump to his own conclusions.

“Wow, you really are an idiot if you think that’s what was going to happen. Now shut up and listen, and don’t interrupt me again,” he told Momota, his face flushed red from being cut off. “I wasn’t going to give them to Amami-chan, he has nothing to do with this.” As much as he would love to pin the blame on Amami, it wouldn’t be good for either of them. There was no reason he should drag Amami into this. He’d gotten himself involved with Ouma, sure, and that was enough to warrant that he was susceptible to being accused by Ouma if Ouma so pleased, but he would rather not try to frame Amami for no good reason. For right now, Amami was safe from being accused of most things. “Anyway, as I was saying, the doctors have been working with me for some time to get me to walk again. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I guess for you it won’t be. But you’ll keep it a secret, right? You won’t tell any of the other people here that I know how to walk, right? It’s supposed to be a surprise, let’s keep it that way until I’m ready to reveal it. You can’t even tell the other doctors, no matter how much they bug you about it! Just remember, you’re not even supposed to know.”  

Momota studied him, clearly working everything Ouma had said up to this point through in his brain, trying to find contradictions in what had been said. Finally, he seemed not to have anything more to question or point out about Ouma’s statements because he nodded. “Yup, I’ll keep it a secret between you and me that I know,” Momota assured him and Ouma could feel the greater meaning of it stabbing him straight through the heart. Keep it a secret that he knew about the notes, keep it a secret that he knew about the walking, keep it a secret that he knew Ouma was probably lying through his teeth at every point of their conversation. In the end, the winding and twisting road Ouma had weaved with his words made Momota’s head spin in confusion until he couldn’t tell which way was north, south, east, west, up, down. No matter which way he looked, there seemed to always be more questions than answers.  

Ouma was tangled up in a web of lies and secrets, the web sticking to him and not letting him break free, no matter how much he struggled the spider got closer and closer, coming to wrap him up in a cocoon until he couldn’t even breathe. He spoke of truth and it was called a lie, he spoke of lies and it was seen as the truth; was there no one here worthy enough to unmask his true nature? Could there ever be?

“It’s late,” Momota complained, looking at the clock. “Got to bed, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yup! Same goes for you. Be sure to shut the door _gently,_ ” Ouma told him, smiling.

“Right. ‘Night.”

“Good night!”

Momota shut the door gently surprising Ouma by being conscious of his surroundings for once. The room was empty again.

He gave an aggravated sighed and gripped the bedsheets under his hands, curling into it even tighter than he had into Momota’s shirt, giving a frustrated glare down at the hat. It had done nothing wrong (it was a hat, what could it have done wrong?), but he still felt some anger towards it. In a way, though, it mocked him. The answer was right in front of him, yet he couldn’t know less. “Fuck!”

Filled with a sudden urge, he got out of bed, bringing the hat with him into the bathroom and started the sink. The water rushed out cold from not being used by anyone for so many hours. He stuck the hat under the water, watching as the previously dried blood stains became wet and bled the water red as it was washed out of the fibers of the hat. Watching it as it swirled down the drain made him sick, so he dropped it in the sink, still letting the water, now warm, run over it, and looked down at his own clothes. There was some blood on them and it made him shiver, so he took those off too, taking clean replacements from a cabinet and putting those on instead. In a way, he missed the white clothes that the nurse had brought in for him, but he was also glad he wasn’t wearing them now—the bloodstains would be all that more obvious and disturb him even more. Once he was done with changing, he went back over to the sink and picked up the now soaked hat, shutting off the water momentarily so he could wring the water from the hat. For the most part the water was clear and clean, but the first time he tried to wring it, only pink tinted water flowed from it.

Once the hat had been wrung out enough that it was only dripping water every other second, he repeated the process with the clothes he had taken off, this time having no choice but to use his hands to rub the blood out of the much thinner material. He wrinkled his nose up in disgust as his hand touched the clothes, making the water bleed. The blood of the dead. The blood of fate inescapable.

When he was sure that the clothes had been as clean of blood as they were going to get, he threw them into the hamper, immediately cleaning his hands with soap, scrubbing until his hands turned red for a different reason.

With nothing left to do, and no place to hide the hat outside of the bathroom, he shoved it into the cabinet under some of the clothes, arranging it so it didn’t stick out too much. His nurse mostly excluded this area. He considered it a previously safe area to stowe things. But he had no idea who would care for him now that his nurse was dead. He was sure they would probably assign a stricter nurse to him now, but he supposed the answer to his question would be found in just a few hours.

He exited the bathroom, done with doing all he could at that moment, and crawled into his bed, finally resting on his own free will at night time for the first time in two days.

He knew there was one last feet of thinking left to do. He put the events of the night through the filter of his tired, but still precise mind. Whoever killed the nurse also removed the body, knew he was able to walk, probably saw the note before Momota saw it, and would probably kill him too. Wonderful. He wondered what nightmares he would have tonight. Then he slept.

* * *

“Ugh,” Ouma groaned out, having the desire to spit out the vile substance that was in his mouth. “These noodles are way too fucking soggy. Good chef my ass,” Ouma mumbled, eliciting laughter out of Amami and Momota. Akamatsu had yet to return to sitting at their table and Ouma wasn’t surprised when she didn’t this morning. She was clearly still bitter about what had happened yesterday.

Ouma had been getting concerned glances from everyone though the entire day, people staring at him with curious eyes as he tried to eat, perhaps only adding to his perception of how bad the soup tasted. He was even stopped a few times by some people, directly asking him if he was okay instead of just staring at him.

“So I see you’re not going to have that soup again?” Ouma teased Amami, noticing that he had switched back to miso soup after that disastrous mess of a soup they’d tried to give him yesterday.

“Definitely,” he mumbled, moving his spoon around. “I like my soups not to be the same color as my hair,” he said jokingly.

* * *

When he got back to his room, the doctor that had came and saw him yesterday was there waiting for him, a shiny bottle of orange filled with white pills in one of her hands.

“Ah, good morning, Ouma-san,” she said, taking his wheelchair from Amami. “You can go now,” she told Amami, glaring at him. Amami put his hands up sheepishly and walked out of the room, shooting a concerned glance back at Ouma as he walked out.

“So, there’s been a little bit of an issue with your nurse,” she said to him, looking at him with pity in her eyes. “She had to quit, but that’s okay because we’ll just assign you a new nurse. I’m sure Amami wouldn’t mind still helping you a bit either, at least until this new nurse gets used to your schedule.”  

“Nurse-chan quit?” He asked, putting a little bit of a quiver in his voice. “She didn’t even say goodbye to me!” He shouted, sniffing. “How rude of her!” He said, his sadness transforming into fake anger at the nurse’s actions.

“There, there,” the doctor said, patting his shoulder with even faker empathy than the fake anger he playing up.

He switched back to being sad at the doctor’s touches. “Will she ever come back again? I would have written her a goodbye card! Oh, Nurse-chan, why did you have to leave?” He cried out in the shrillest voice he could, making the doctor wince.

“It’ll all be okay, just...just shut up!” The doctor yelled out, unable to take the crying and the whining for much longer.

“Jeez,” Ouma said, slowly coming out of his fake sadness, giving a few sniffles and gentle and careful eye rubs along the way to help his performance. “Didn’t they ever tell you in medical school that the worst way to handle someone crying is to tell them to shut up? Didn’t they like, I don’t know, train you how to calm down crying people? What if I had just been a boy who had lost his relatives? Would you tell me to shut up if that was the case?”

“They might have trained me for that, but they certainly didn’t train me on how to deal with people like you,” she informed him, glaring daggers at him.

“Oof, and you just keep getting ruder too,” he laughed at her.

The doctor took a deep breath. “Breathe in, don’t let him get to you...breathe out.”

She shook her head and a fake smile twitched it’s way onto her face. “Besides from that news, I came to give you the meds I said I was going to have the staff make. It should help with any headaches you’ve ever had or will have, and should ensure that nothing bad happens to you, for the most part. Unfortunately,” she said, and then mumbled a quick, ‘or maybe fortunately,’ “ it can’t protect you from bad things that other people can do to you such as strangulation, being stabbed, excetra, y’know, those kinds of things.”  

“Err...Alright, thanks.” He held his hands out for the bottle, allowing the doctor to give it to him.

“Now don’t lose it, okay?” She told him, her voice stern as if she were scolding a child.

“Yes ma’am,” he said with a taunting smile.

She sighed, and like so many other people, walked out the door without another word to him.

He placed the bottle on his nightstand. He wouldn’t be such a fool so as to toss them all away at once like he did with Amami’s bottle—with this one, he would toss them out, one per day, so it looked like he was taking them at the very least. From what he had observed, there didn’t seem to be a difference in the behavior and attitude of people who were taking it versus those who were not, besides from the being more tired condition they all seemed to get, so Ouma doubted they would even ever know; he already took enough midday naps to prove his point.  

With breakfast out of the way, and only a few hours of sleep under his belt, he decided it would be best if he just fell asleep, if not to pass the lonely and boring time then to at least make sure he didn’t pass out tonight, because tonight, no matter what, he had to talk to Saihara.  

* * *

Lunch passed much the same and Ouma felt himself even more bored than usual, with nothing that any of them could discuss in public. Not only that, but now Amami and Momota were on entirely different planes of understanding. He couldn’t have Amami figuring out that Momota, of all people, knew something more than he did and especially if it was from information that Ouma had told him. Ouma had a suspicion that Amami already knew that something was up though by the way that his eyes kept flickering between the two of them, not helping the tension that was already at the table as it was.

Roaring laughter from the other table made them flinch and whip their heads around to see where it had come from. Ouma honestly wasn’t surprised to see that it was the table of girls that Akamatsu had joined, having fun and looking as if there was nothing wrong in the world. Akamastsu caught his eye for a second as she looked back at the group before quickly looking away again, going silent in a futile attempt to act as if she wasn’t there.

Momota slammed his hands on the table, making the other two flinch again, Amami making a worried noise as some of the soup splashed out of the bowl and dangerously close to his body. “That’s it,” Momota declared, huffing and standing up. “I’m going to go over there and talk to her.”

“No, don’t do that, you’re just going to make things worse,” Amami said. “Just sit back down.”

If Momota heard him over the anger he was feeling, he didn’t show it as he marched over to the girls table while Amami and Ouma watched for a second before shaking their heads in disapproval.

Ouma laughed, wondering how funny this was going to be to watch.   

Amami held his head in his hands. “If anyone asks, we don’t know him.”

“Oh, we definitely know him, there’s no use in denying claims about that. Plus, this is looking to be interesting. Watch carefully Amami-chan, because this is the once in a lifetime chance you’re going to get to see a man get his dick chopped off live in person.”

Amami looked at him with disbelief in his eyes. “Why would anyone ever want to see that?”

“Hey, listen, some people are fucked up. I bet there’s a least one person in the world who’s into that kind of stuff.” Ouma laughed as Amami groaned and shook his head harder, taking another spoonful of his soup and trying his hardest to ignore the growing feud that was happening in front of his eyes.      

What had started as a small tense conversation between Momota and Akamatsu had somehow evolved into a standoff between Chabashira and Momota instead. Her eyes were cold as she glared up into Momota’s eyes, standing directly in between Akamatsu and Momota, much to what looked like Akamatsu’s displeasure. Akamatsu was shaking her head, sweating, very clearly trying to help de-escalate the situation, but Chabashira brushed Akamatsu’s hands off, refusing to sit back down.

The standoff had caught the attention of a few of the nurses who came over meek and hesitantly, trying to get both sides to stop as well. Neither Momota nor Chabashira was having any of it though, glaring at each other without a care to what was happening around them. They were completely aware of each other’s movements and for a moment Ouma very much thought he was going to watch either Momota or Chabashira throw the first punch, but nothing happened.

After a few minutes of the entire dining hall being silent, everyone watching the standoff with bated breath, Momota said the first words. “Just let me speak to Akamatsu-san. This doesn’t even have anything to do with you, you didn’t even have to get involved!”

“Don’t think I didn’t see you over there you degenerate male! You clearly came over here with anger and I won’t let you get close to anyone here when you’re like that!”

“I just want to speak to Akamatsu-san, what’s your problem?!” Momota yelled, grinding his teeth in anger.

“No, I won’t allow it! She came over here for a reason, so just leave her alone,” Chabashira shot back.

“Just...” Momota grit out, finally losing his patience with the situation, trying to reach around Chabashira to grab at Akamatsu, making a big mistake. Chabashira grabbed his outstretched arm, making Momota yelp in surprise, and flung him to the ground with the form and fluid motion of somebody who had to have know martial arts for years. “HIYAAH!”

With a loud thud, Momota slammed down onto the ground, making a few of the people at the table rise in shock, hands over their mouths as they looked at Momota who laid on the ground curled up and groaning.

To his side, Ouma heard Amami shudder and give a disapproving stare at Momota, who gave a low “fuck” under his breath.

The nurses rushed over to contain the situation fully now, Chabashira calmly, and willingly, allowing them to push her back into her seat, as if she no longer had any problem or anger at the situation. In fact, the more that Ouma thought about it, the more it seemed as if she wasn’t angry at all to begin with. He hummed, curling one of his purple locks around his finger as he kept observing with interest. The nurses also helped up Momota, who was smiling kindly at Akamatsu while she was apologizing fervently as if it were her fault that the confrontation had happened.

Ouma scoffed. There was no way she could have stopped something like that, they were way too deeply into their own beliefs with nothing to gain from hearing the other out. There was nothing that could have been done to stop Momota being thrown to the ground, and he should have realized that the minute he left himself unguarded in such a stupid and predictable way he would be punished for it.

Helped back over to their table by the nurses, Momota assured them that he was okay (it was just the initial shock and pain of being thrown down that had made him curl up like that, of course he’d be fine he was strong), as the nurses left him to go and talk more to Chabashira about her actions. None of the nurses seemed to be serious about their words and didn’t yell at her at all about her actions. In fact, Ouma could see a few nurses holding back smiles.

“Fuck that hurt,” Momota groaned out. “I didn’t think she would actually punch me or anything. Especially not do _that,_ ” He complained.

“I wasn’t even looking at her up close and I could see the fire in her eyes. She was going to do something if you tried to get to Akamatsu-san, could you seriously not see that when you were right in front of her face?”

“Of course he couldn’t, Amami-chan, he is an idiot after all,” Ouma cut in before Momota could say anything.

“Call me an idiot one more time you gremlin and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Ouma asked with glee. “Try to hurt me? Yeah, good luck with that. From what I just saw, you can’t even defend yourself.”

“I didn’t want to punch her!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Amami said to their side, making a bit of the tension disappear as they both laughed.

None of them were paying any attention to the girl’s table and missed as both Akamatsu and Chabashira gave a glace back to their table, a plan brewing based on exchanged desires...and secrets of their own.     

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might say that I updated this on 3/27, but where I am, it's still the 26th, soooo, HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAEDE  
> Anyway, sorry this chapter is coming out late, I rewrote this chapter several times and it was one of the harder chapters for me to write, so sorry about that!!  
> Also, I would like to give a big shout-out to efoxkitty who made this for the fic: https://efoxkitty.tumblr.com/post/172136420305/here-it-is-guys-my-first-official-fanart-for-a <3  
> Thank all of you for your kind words last chapter!! I'm very glad that the chapter was taken well, and I'm glad that people told me that they like this story!! Thank all of you a lot, it means a lot to me!! 
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed this chapter!! See ya next week!!


	8. Curiosity Might Have Almost Killed the Cat, But Curiosity Also Brought it Back

When Ouma heard knocking on his door, he was surprised to say the least. When the door didn’t instantly open, he was even more surprised. Who in this place was willing to give him a visit in the middle of the day? If it was Momota or Amami or literally anyone else the door would have already been opened the minute that they stopped knocking. Knocking, in this place was used as an alert, not a request to enter.

Filled with curiosity, he called out to them and told whoever was there that they could enter. When he saw the first few strands of blonde hair, his curiosity turned to understanding and then suspicion as he smiled at her.

She glanced around at his room as she walked in, closing the door behind her.

“It’s the same everywhere, isn’t it?” She sighed.

“Yes. Welcome to my humble abode where it looks the same as everyone’s because it _is_ the same!”

She looked at the ground, kicking the piece of paper that had gone under her shoe out of the way so she didn’t slip. Even though Momota and Ouma had cleaned his room not too long ago, Ouma didn’t break out of the habit of throwing random drawings onto the floor.

“I came to apologize about earlier,” she said. “I didn’t think she would do that to Momota-kun.”

“Yeah, neither did he. Don’t you think you’re apologizing to the wrong person though? Shouldn’t you be apologizing to the actual person that Chabashira-chan flipped onto the ground. Not like you could have stopped it anyway,” he told her, brushing off her apologies.

Akamatsu hummed in agreement. “I already talked to Momota-kun about it. He seemed to be okay, nothing was really hurt.”

“So was that the only reason you came in here?” He asked her, raising an eyebrow.

She fidgeted under his gaze. “I just wanted to check up on you too, y’know.” She pouted. “Not everything has to be about someone else. What about you? How are you?”

“I’m doing great! I love every moment that I just have to lay here!”

Akamatsu scratched her head. “R-Right,” she said, doubt creeping into her voice. In her observing, she noticed the clipboard on his nightstand. “Hey, are these your drawings?” She asked, reaching out and trying to take it off the nightstand.

“No! I don’t want you to look at my art! It’s too personal, you can’t see it.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,” she tried to reassure him, trying to grab the clipboard through his arms which had reached out to protect it.

“Nuh-uh. I still don’t want anyone to look at them,” he insisted.

“Ugh! Stop being so stubborn. There’s nothing to be scared of showing me!”

He grabbed the clipboard off the nightstand, protecting it, with both arms, as he hugged the clipboard tight to his chest. He tried to ignore the abrasive and irritating pinch of the clip as it dug into his collar bone.    

“Nope.”

She groaned in defeat. “Y’know you don't help your own case when you do things like this.”

“I plead the fifth.”

“That doesn't even have anything to do with this at all.”

“Why don’t you just tell me the real reason that you’re here. If you were trying to pretend that you actually cared about me—”

“I honestly did want to make sure you were okay and to apologize to you,” she said, cutting him off and rubbing her arm.

Not all of that was true, he could clearly tell that. “Liar, you wanted something.”

She groaned, this time in frustration. “Fine. Be that way,” she huffed and turned her back to him, ready to leave the room. “But, y’know, I’m sure if we all worked together we could get something to work. Just...think about it and get back to me, okay?” She sighed and left the room without another word. She knew an authentic response wouldn’t come, just a sarcastic one, and found no point in staying any longer only to be antagonized by Ouma. If he wanted to cooperate with her, he would seek her out on his own free will.

* * *

When it came time for all of them to go to dinner, the nurses seemed to be tense at first, anticipating another fight, but relaxed when no conflicts seemed imminent. They didn’t do anything to stop it the first time, and it didn’t seem they had a way to stop it if something happened again. Ouma wondered if they were concerned about the patients or the danger to themselves if they intervened.  

Their table, as had become the norm, was silent. Ouma sighed and leaned his head on his hand, making it look as if he was pouting while he looked at Akamatsu from a distance, observing her movements and her conversation with the people at her table.

Momota followed his eyes to see where he was looking and scowled.

“Oh, don’t look like that,” Amami said, scowling at Momota in return.

“Fine. But why are you staring at her, Ouma-kun? You don’t plan on going over there and doing what I did, do you? I doubt you’d be able to take a full body flip as well as I could.”

“I thought you said it didn’t really hurt you,” Ouma said, raising an eyebrow, still not looking away from Akamatsu.

Momota sputtered. “We-Well of course! I’m just saying that I can handle something like that. You on the other hand…” Momota trailed off, gesturing at Ouma’s physical appearance.

It was probably true, it would hurt Ouma a lot more, and the last thing he needed right now was to risk getting another injury. Momota was built a lot sturdier, where as Ouma’s body was smaller, easier to use to get into trickier spaces, and and more flexible; perfect for the activities he chose to do. His body in no way could take as much headstrong reckless abuse that Momota’s could and that was just a much hated fact that he always had to keep in mind. “Please. I don’t even need to worry about getting thrown like that. I wouldn’t leave myself so exposed like that, not to mention I would never go for such an obvious move so slowly.”

“Okay, if that’s what makes you feel good about yourself,” Momota grumbled, face twitching in aggravation, Ouma’s taunts compounding his embarrassment.

Ouma bit his tongue, but figured he should at least tell Momota in case something happened to him. “She came to my room earlier,” he admitted.  Momota and Amami stopped what they were doing and stared at him, their mouths agape.

“She came to your room!?” They both asked, louder than Ouma hoped.

“SSSHHH!” Ouma said, putting his finger to his mouth, seeing as how even Amami had looked back to see if Akamatsu had reacted to the comment. If she did hear it over the general noise of both the the dining hall and he own table’s chatter, she showed no indication of it, not even breaking in her happy laughter.

“What did she want?” Momota asked. “Are you sure it’s okay to be talking like this?” He added, gesturing with his eyes to Amami.

Ouma laughed. “We should probably wait until we get back to my room, but yeah, it’s okay to talk about it in front of him like this. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s secretly planning to kill us with the info he gathers.”

Momota looked positively creeped out while Amami sighed. “You know that’s not true. I would _probably_ never do something like that to you,” he joked around, giving a small smile.

“Not reassuring in the slightest, but I guess I can trust you on that one. No one would actually go out of their way to kill another person here,” Momota said. His retort hung in the air.

How Ouma would have loved to have his blissful ignorance. Or maybe not.

“Idiot,” Ouma mumbled and watched as Momota bristled.

* * *

Once they were back in Ouma’s room, Momota looked at him with interest.

“Alright. What happened with her?” He asked, getting right to the point.

“She came in here and asked me for my signature! She finally bowed down to how awesome I am!” He lied, eyes shining with fake enthusiasm. “I can’t believe you’re the only one here who hasn’t asked me for my signature yet, Momota-chan. What’s up with that?”

“Just get to the point. There’s no time for fooling around.”

Ouma agreed. Normally he would say there was tons of time to fool around with Momota; that there was so much time in their days that all they could do was sit in their beds and rot away forever that’s how much time they had on their hands. Plus, he still had to deal with Saihara in a few hours. There was no use wasting more brain power on such a simple conversation when it wasn’t needed nor could it be afforded at that time.“Fine. But just know it hurts that you seriously don’t want an autograph from me, y’know.”

Momota sighed in frustration. “If I let you sign my arm will you shut up and tell me the actual important stuff?” Momota gave in.

“Ew. Who said I would even give you my signature? Stop being so desperate, Momota-chan. But fine. If that’s what you want, take off your shirt and get ready for me to sign both of your nipples! You should consider yourself blessed that I would even do such a thing for you.”

“Who fucking raised you?”

“Not anyone respectable, I’m sure. Anyway, about Akamatsu-san,” Ouma said, his voice suddenly growing serious, causing Momota to come closer to him. “She really did come to my room earlier. She wanted to talk to me about some stuff.” He purposely left out the part that she had specifically went for the clipboard. While there wasn’t anything that serious clipped into it, besides from the map, he’d rather not draw any more attention to it than was needed.

“So she’s really trying to dig her nose into this, huh? Why’d you stop me from confronting her at dinner? Wouldn’t it be better if we told her right then and there that she wasn’t welcome to be doing those kinds of things and to mind her own business?”

“If only you could follow your own advice every once in a while too,” Ouma sighed out, waiting for Momota to catch on.

“What are you trying to accuse me of n—oh yeah, I guess that is kind of what I did…” Momota trailed off, putting his hand to his chin in thought. “But that’s different!”

Ouma rolled his eyes.

“You’ll never learn. Also, you idiot, I didn’t want you to go over there because you’re going to draw too much attention to us. It doesn’t help that you already drew a lot of attention to us earlier, but twice in a day? People would be all over that. Just shut up for once and follow my orders not to do anything about it for right now. If she starts to get in our way, then we’ll start to do something about it. Until then, you’d better not interfere with anything, got it?” Ouma knew he’d have to do something about Akamatsu _before_ she became a big problem, but he wasn’t going to let Momota in on that one either. He would use Momota if he needed to, but only if Akamatsu became a big problem. Momota, as he had proved time and time again, had little restraint over what slipped out of his mouth. It wouldn’t take much to get him to accidently leak a secret or a plan, and Ouma wasn’t willing to extend his uneasy trust in Momota any further than it was being forced to go.

“Alright, if you think that’s best. I still think we should confront her, but…” Momota trailed off and Ouma was struck with the sudden fear that he might do something on his own free will anyway. He didn’t have to bring Akamatsu coming into Ouma’s room earlier to march down to her room without a reason. The only reason that Momota needed, in his mind, was that she might be up to something.

“Really, don’t do anything.” Ouma glared at Momota, who looked back at him, annoyed.

“Really, I won’t. The first step to getting people to trust and believe in you is trust and believe in what they’re saying too! So if that’s really what you think is best for right now, then I’ll choose to believe that you’re right!”

Oh, if only you knew how one-sided your damned belief was. “Is that so? Thanks then, I guess.” Getting tangled up in such beliefs as believing in the best in others, believing that unwavering trust could exist, they were all things that lead the ultimate doom of many people. Ouma could try to drill it into his head a million times, but Momota would probably never listen. It was wasted breath and thus wasted energy. Ouma held him at an arm’s length, refusing to let him get close, while Momota ran forward with arms open wide, trying to get as close as possible. Disgusting what such things as “trust” could do to you. His mind flashed to the hat sitting in his bathroom and he instantly banished the thought. He refused to acknowledge any of his feelings towards Saihara to be “trust,” even though deep inside he knew it was a lie.

“It’s okay if you don’t trust me right now! I’ll show you that it’s okay to believe in me!”

“Oh! Oh! Quick, help me find my money! I’m laying all of it down on “I will eventually always trust Momota-chan!”” He said, the sarcasm oozing from his voice.

“Why do you make this so damn hard? What do you get out of being like this?”

“The self-satisfaction of seeing you squirm like a little ant beneath my foot right before I crush you.”

“I’m seriously going to find your parents and ask them if they dropped you on your head as a kid.”

“Oh, just phone up your mother, I’m sure she’d know the answer to that one!”

“What are you even—HEY!”

Ouma laughed as Momota resisted the urge to choke him.

* * *

Once Momota had assured him that he would not go and confront Akamatsu and that he’d lay low for a bit, Momota left his room for the night, allowing Ouma to work on his own plan for the rest of the day. He brought the pen up to his mouth, absentmindedly biting down hard on the end of it to relieve himself of some of his pent up frustration and worry.

He stared at a blank page, brainstorming what he could say to Saihara. He knew his response had to come tonight, or he was afraid that Saihara would think he’d left or didn’t want to talk anymore. Something else walked the halls. Something killed his nurse and then covered it up. Something knew he could walk. He pushed the fear away. It didn’t matter. He had to pass this note.    

He traced the words that he was thinking about with his eyes on the paper, trying to imagine how they would sound to Saihara.

 ** _Hey, how did you know it was_** **me** ** _?_** No, definitely not, instant way to not get a reply straight off the bat from him. That could come later in his conversation after he’d made Saihara’s hand loose.

 **_Soooo, my nurse is like, kinda dead?_ ** And that was the perfect way for him to increase the target on his back. Not to mention it wasn’t even a good way to start off a conversation with someone. He huffed, resting his head on his hands for a moment, attempting to think.

After a few minutes of thinking, Ouma hummed and brought the clipboard back into his vision, finally putting the pen down onto the paper.

**Saihara-chan,**

**Sorry for not sending anything for two days in a row. Were you worried about me? That’s cute! On another note, how have you been? Something interesting had to have happened in the past few days. I want to hear all about it! Everything has been so boring…**

There. Just subtly fishing and implying, yet not coming straight out to ask if Saihara knew anything.

With time left to spare, he pulled out another piece of paper and doodled, not really paying attention to what he was drawing, more into the aspect of just letting his thoughts flow and try to map out different scenarios of what could happen tonight.

When he took a quick glance down at the paper, he noticed he drew a monochrome bear. He drew it several times. _Why,_ he wondered. Even looking at the doodles felt wrong, as if he shouldn’t know something, as if he was breaking some kind of rule he wasn’t supposed to break. Bad. Taboo. He shredded the bears and threw them under the bed.

He returned to thinking about the night ahead, again not paying attention as his hand moved almost with a mind of its own. It was nice, Ouma barely had to worry about what the rest of his body was doing as he thought, his whole body almost feeling numb as he just thought and thought and thought.

The next time he looked back down, he was pleased to see that he hadn’t doodled the weird bear again, but instead something vaguely resembling a human person. They lacked a real design, but there were other things that he’d definitely drawn in. The hair, for one, stood out immediately to Ouma and struck a chord in him, telling him he’d seen something similar to that before. Oh, had it been in the dream he had earlier? That seemed more and more likely, the more he thought about it. It did give him a strong sense of deja-vu, and he found himself wondering who he was even drawing.

Was it just some random person that Ouma had dreamt up, or was it somebody way more significant? Ouma doubted that he would just be able to make somebody up in his mind as unique looking as that without thinking about them a lot first. But then again, the mind did work in very strange ways.

He didn’t know the answers to his ponderings, and he might never if he didn’t experience a dream like that again, so he went back to doodling, trying not to get anxious enough to glance at the clock every other second.

He was officially really, really bored.

* * *

Ouma crept out of his room, this time making triple sure to check all of his surroundings. He refused to be caught off guard like that again.

When the path seemed clear, he went over to the door, and still hyper cautious, bent down to slip the note under the door, praying that Saihara would still be there.

While he was waiting to see if he would even get a message back, he made sure to quietly check the girl’s side too, not taking risks with either Akamatsu, Chabashira, or the figure that had knocked him out.

When he came back, there was still no message waiting for him and Ouma almost went back to his room in defeat before a note slid under the door and Ouma greedily grabbed at it.

 **It’s okay, I’m just glad you’re okay, really. I’ll admit, I was a bit worried, but that’s okay, I should know that you can handle yourself. Nothing has really happened to me, but something I owned did go missing...but that’s okay, I didn’t really want to have it anyway, but I probably still keep all of my things in one place for their convenience...** **Sorry you’ve been bored. Nothing has happened on your end?**

- **Saihara**

Ouma smiled at the note, happy he was still getting something back. And better yet, Saihara still acted the same as he normally did, meaning there was no severe change in attitude towards Ouma since the last time they had done this.  

**Saihara-chan**

**Oh? What went missing? Maybe I can help you find it if it comes over here by mistake? I mean, nothing really has happened. Just a few minor things. A few, roadblocks in life if you’d like.**  

And now he did the inevitable thing he had to do when ever he passed notes to Saihara; he had to wait and wait and wait. He was pretty sure over half of the time they spent doing this was just him waiting for Saihara to actually respond and then send the note back over. It was something he would have to bring up with Saihara at some point maybe, but for right now there was no reason to. Maybe he should save the times he needed Saihara to speed up for emergency situations or when he could only have time to get a quick response out of him.

He grinned internally. On the same side of the coin, he could also ask Saihara to hurry something up and make him more flustered and more prone to slipping up in his response. Yes, he would definitely save that for a time when he could manipulate Saihara into giving him the absolute truth in his frenzy to obey Ouma’s orders.

The paper hit his feet and he picked it up and read it.

**Oh, thank you, that’s very...nice of you. It’s a black hat, with a star on it. It would be hard to mistake it if you do find it. You haven’t seen it around, have you? Also, roadblocks? Is everything alright with you?**

**-Saihara**

Ouma had to stop his hand from instinctively writing something snarky back in response, measuring his response carefully.

**Saihara-chan,**

**Nope, I haven’t seen it! Sorry! But just because I’m curious, what’s the hat to you? What would you do to get it back? Is it important to you? Would you even be able to get it back? I’m fine, I guess, but honestly who isn’t just “fine” these days. I had a weird dream about a stranger, but that’s about it. Nothing too big, but it was a nice dream I suppose.**

Whenever there were moments of silence like this, Ouma liked to wonder what Saihara was thinking about. Was he thinking about how much he should say in his notes back to Ouma (most probable) or did he think about what he would be having for breakfast (least probable in Ouma’s opinion)? Ouma wondered what it would be like to spend a day in Saihara’s shoes. What his thoughts were. What Ouma meant to him, if anything. What did the fucking hat mean to him and why.  

Soon enough though, like a boomerang, the note came back.

**Strange dream? Do you remember what the person looked like? Regarding me getting my hat back if it was found, the nurses would probably just bring it to me through the door they normally come through. They would definitely want it back on this side, back with me.**

**-Saihara**

Now it was going more in the direction of how Ouma wanted. Before he could respond though, he heard the creaking of a door to his left and whipped around. He refused to be taken by surprise once again, but when he saw what made the creaking noise, he almost wanted to drop what he was doing and punch Momota.

“What are you doing?” He tried to mouth to Momota, not wanting to speak in the hall where it could wake someone up.

Momota tilted his head, not understanding what was being asked of him. Whether he couldn’t tell what Ouma was saying because of the dark or his own ability not to read lips well, Ouma was annoyed either way.

Ouma sighed mentally and did the next best thing, the universal hand sign for “go away.” He made a shooing motion with his hand, trying to tell Momota that he should stop but he continued to walk forward.

Once he was standing next to Ouma, he looked at the paper he had grasped tightly in his hands and the door Ouma was standing in front of. “So thi—”

Ouma cut him off by slamming his hand over Momota’s mouth. Even though he had been whispering, Ouma was still scared of Saihara hearing and perhaps being scared off if he thought that their conversations weren’t absolutely private.

Ouma pointed at Momota’s room with a glare that clearly implied that he wanted Momota to GO AWAY NOW! Momota raised his hand slightly in a sign of surrenderance as he backed up slowly, making a disgusted expression once his face was free from Ouma’s palm. He quietly exited the same way he had come in and Ouma scowled at the door. It wasn’t cute that Momota was coming out, it was annoying. He focused on the note in his hands once more.

**Saihara-chan,**

**How do the nurses get over there? I’ve never seen them use this door before, unless they have while I was not looking (which is never. I’m always watching, so I know it’s impossible that they’ve used this door). The person in my dreams...was my sugar daddy, I’m sure! He had golden eyes and this hair that stuck up in the middle. I cut my finger in the dream and he helped me bandage it up! A person like that has to be loaded with cash!**

Ouma grinned with held back laughter as he sent the note back over. It took a little bit less time for Saihara to respond this time and the writing was a bit shakier than it had been previously.

**A person with golden eyes and hair that stuck up? Are you absolutely sure? Get me another piece of paper if you can, I’ll try to draw you a map of what my side looks like if you want to help you understand some future references I might make too.**

It wasn’t even signed with Saihara’s name this time. He was clearly in a rush about something. Was it close to their time to stop talking? As hesitant as he was to blindly follow Saihara’s demands, he reminded himself that his curiosity might get him into dangerous situations, but the satisfaction of learning more always brought him back for more. He went into his room and reached for a blank piece of paper before stopping short. Shouldn’t he just send his map over? No. That was too risky, right? But maybe, at the same time, it could help Saihara understand his side better as well.

He took a deep breath in, tried to calm his nerves, and pulled the map out of the clipboard hiding it underneath the note. With interest, he did not fail to make note of the fact that they still had a full hour left to talk if Saihara didn’t make up some reason to go away early.  

**Saihara-chan,**

**It happened in a dream! I’m not sure of anything that happens in a dream, but I can assure you that that is at least a halfway decent description of what I remember him to look like! What does it matter to you, Saihara-chan? Is he your evil twin brother or something? The map I just handed you has my side on the front, use the back for your side (duh-doy). I hope that will help you understand what my side looks like as well.**

With a final breath in, he slid the map under first and then the note.

He was expecting more boring silence as he waited for Saihara to finish the map, but what he wasn’t expecting was for another note to be slid under the door.

**If you’re sure, I...have something I have to ask of you; something I want you to try if it’s not too much. I’ll promise to work on the map while you’re trying it.**

**-Saihara**

Interested in what Saihara could possibly want him to do, he quickly got to writing a response back.

**Saihara-chan,**

**Sure! What ever could you want me to try and do? My full effort is not guaranteed under the clause of “trying,” but you can tell me anyway and maybe I’ll put my effort into it.**

Again he didn’t have to wait long for another response to come over, this one written with even shakier handwriting than before.

 **I want you to try to lockpick the door open.**   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *finger guns* so Saihara, am I right? 
> 
> Every time I have to write Saihara's part, I die a little more on the inside with how ao3 always makes me fix the formatting. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! Hope you liked the chapter!


	9. Meeting

Ouma scoffed.

**Saihara-chan,**

**We might be stuck in a hospital, but that doesn’t mean that I’m here because I’m blind. You should be able to open the door just fine from your side if you really wanted to without me needing to lockpick anything.**

Despite Saihara’s claim that he was doing the map, he was awfully quick to respond.

**No, that’s not true. The lock is a double cylinder, meaning both of our sides can be used as the locks *and* the keys.**

Oh? That was interesting indeed.

**Saihara-chan,**

**What is even the use of a lock like that in this place? Plus, I think you’re just assuming that I can lock pick. How do you know I even can? Do *you* know how to lockpick? Do you have a plan to help me lockpick this door?**

Plus, even if he did want to lockpick the door open for Saihara, what would he use to do it? All he had at his disposal to even consider doing such a thing was the hair pins he’d stolen from the drawer, probably not the easiest thing for him to do a pick with.

**You *can* do it. Convince yourself of that fact and you’ll be able to do it with ease.**

Saihara was lucky there was a door separating them, he really was. As it was, Ouma focused his glare onto the door, hoping that somehow Saihara would see it and realize how stupid he was being. Just convince yourself? There was no such thing as “just convincing yourself” when it came to such mechanical things. It was a skill, not a goddamn magic trick. It had to be learned and practiced through days and months and years, not in a few minutes fumbling around with a lock and some hair pins with some half decent knowledge of how to do it.

**Saihara-chan,**

**I will try this *once* and the minute I know I can’t do it for sure, I’m going to stop. Why do you even want me to open this door anyway?**

Ouma knew why _he_ wanted the door open, but Saihara’s reasons were never defined and left him with shaky confidence in proceeding with the plan.

**You want to leave this place, right? I want to see you all leave this place too. You didn’t deserve any of this, none of you deserved any of this.**

Wow, great, more cryptic bullshit. Just what he needed on top of all the other weird things he had to deal with. Another straw added to the camel’s back wouldn’t hurt anything.

**Saihara-chan,**

**But don't you want to leave this place too? Have you done something that would make you deserve to be stuck here?**

The way Ouma had read it had been almost sad, as if Saihara didn’t care if he was stuck here forever.

**I want to leave, of course, but that doesn’t mean I will be able to of my own free will. I’ll be glad to stay here and keep causing problems and legal issues. I don’t care about that, I’ll use my own life to do that. But you, all of you, never agreed to use your life for something like this. It’s wrong of them to do this to you, I don’t care what they say about the issue, it’s just plain wrong. This isn’t what someone would consider “living” to be; you’re just surviving.**

**P.S. Are you going to try to pick the lock now? I’m sure you can do it.**

Ouma was almost sorry he’d asked.

**Yeah, sure, Saihara-chan.**

He slid the note back under the door and went back to his room to grab the hair pins he had hidden in there. He paused, questioning if this was truly a good idea, but found himself too committed in the whole ordeal already to do much else. It wasn’t as if there were many more things he could try at this point. They still had time to keep talking too to boot, so that was a plus.

When he went back out into the hall, he stood in front of the door, wondering what he should do next. Saihara hadn’t sent the note back over, presumably holding it over there until he was finished “picking the lock.” It peeved Ouma a little bit that Saihara didn’t have a way to help him with this, only to tell him to do it and that he would probably be able to. What faith to have in somebody, to believe in the flimsy abilities of another. But he supposed he was no better sometimes, despite how he may try; his conversations with Saihara were enough proof of that.

Ouma got on one of his knees and stared at the lock on the door. He straightened one of the pins out from it so that he would be able to move it up and down easier. Disgusted, but finding it necessary if he wanted to fit the hairpin into the lock, he bit off the small end of it, making it so it was the same size and shape as the rest of the hairpin. He hesitantly stuck the pin in, waiting for some sort of alarm to go off, but when none came, he smiled. At least he didn’t have to worry about that part. That soon proved to be the least of his worries though when he realized that he only was getting a vague picture in his head of how he was supposed to be doing this. What he was doing now felt wrong, it felt like he knew there was another part of the puzzle piece that he was missing.

He realized that even if he did pick the lock, there would be no way to really turn it if he had just the one hairpin in there. He took one of the other hairpins and bend it in such a way that it could act as a lever if needed. While he was at it, he took the other hairpin he was using and bent it slightly on the inside of the lock so that it curved upwards and allowed better access to hit the pins at the top of the lock. When he pushed the lever into the keyhole, it helped to prop up the other pin, like he had wanted, and he was able to reach the top now without a problem. He smiled to himself, but quickly became serious again when he realized that he had only done one small thing in the big scheme of things. What was he supposed to do next again?

He hesitantly pushed the hairpin up, making it move against the top of the pins there, but still, nothing like a miracle happened. The door didn’t magically unlock, as expected, but Ouma was still frustrated that it seemed like he was just mashing his head against the wall with not knowing what to do. Feeling himself too frustrated, he closed his eyes and took a calming breath, trying to calm himself down so that he could think clearer. He let his body relax with the breath, feeling the hairpins become almost nonexistent in his hands.

Slowly reopening his eyes, trying to maintain the calm composure he had just worked so hard to get, he began to move the upper hairpin again, trying his best to let what he thought was correct to happen; almost as if he was trusting some invisible instinct that he had buried deep inside of him.

Hearing the first pin in the lock click surprised him and made him freeze for a second. Was that supposed to happen? He supposed so, there was no other way he really knew that he should be doing this, right? So he tried to use the lever to twist the lock, but found that it was still seized, meaning that there was probably another pin that he hadn’t pushed up yet. Fishing for it again, feeling much more at ease with what he was doing now, he found the other pin that was stuck and pushed it up gently, repeating what he had done with the previous pins.

Trying to twist the lever again, he sucked in sharp breath as he realized that it turned this time. He reached to turn the knob, but a sharply shot paper to his knee stopped him. Being careful not to let the lever turn back and ruin all his hard work, with the hand he had been using to guide the pick and was no longer needed, he picked up the note.

**WAIT!**

It was clearly the most rushed thing Saihara had ever written. It was barely legible and Ouma found himself squinting at it. Saihara had been the one to ask him to try to lockpick the door open, and now he wanted Ouma to wait.

Aggravated, he managed to uncap the pen with his teeth and wrote a message that looked just as bad as the one Saihara had written.

**Why**

What could possibly be the reason that Saihara didn’t want him to open the door? It seemed very suspicious, and despite the fragile trust he had in Saihara, he was starting to become very paranoid about what it could all mean. Was Saihara setting up a trap? Was he with somebody and he didn’t want Ouma to see? Ouma’s mouth twisted into a deeper frown the longer he had to wait for Saihara to respond.

**Sorry. If you want to, you can come over now...but let me warn you, please try not to make any kind of sounds, no matter how surprised you may be. Try to make sure no one is watching you on that side and then slowly open this door and do it just enough so that you can slip in.**

Was this really a good idea? Sure, it was so close within his grasp, but this was sounding more and more fishy by the second.

**Why should I trust you like this?**

He wanted to know more, he craved the knowledge, he craved the information to fill in the gaps in what he already knew, but was it worth it? Was it worth sticking his neck out more and more, making it hard to guard anything that was going to come his way?

**Because you’re curious? Because you want to know more? I can’t *give* you a reason to trust me. Well, I could, I could give you a million reasons, but they wouldn’t matter to you if I just told them to you. You’re more into finding that reason yourself, aren’t you? That’s different, different from what some other people believe. You want a solid reason, while other people are more than happy to call that reason their faith in the good of other people. That reason, for you, I can’t give it to you. Telling you would just make it sound fake, wouldn’t it?**

Determination resolved, not out of curiosity or trust, but out of _interest,_ out of the fact that Saihara continued to keep him intrigued, keep him on his toes and doing something other than rotting away every day. For that, he had a bit of respect for Saihara.

Determined to follow what Saihara had asked of him (although his own paranoia wouldn’t have allowed him to go ahead without doing that anyway), he looked around, making sure that no one was there watching him. He would have loved to recheck the area more methodically, to make sure no one was hiding like he had before, but he assumed that he was safe as he hadn’t heard anything either while he was working on the door.

Steeling himself, he opened the door a bit just enough so that he could see on the other side, still wary about something out to attack him. Saihara had clearly moved aside to give him space to slip through. He paused. He took a deep breath.  

Then he slipped through the small opening he had made for himself, and immediately looked around and observed his surroundings.

Whatever he was doing to prepare himself did not prepare him for what he was going to see. There, in front of his eyes, was the person he had dreamt about.

“Saihara-chan?” He asked softly, beginning to shake a bit.

“Shh,” Saihara said, glancing at the still open door.

Ouma moved out of the way, allowing Saihara to reach around him and close the door gently.

After that though, everything stopped. Neither of them moved and Saihara seemed to be waiting for Ouma to make any sort of movement; to run away, to scream, to do something. Saihara fidgeted nervously.

“So, you’re the person I had that dream about,” Ouma stated plainly.

“Y-Yeah. Sorry about that, that was...not the most pleasant way to start to remember some things, I’m sure.”

“Oh? Did we know each other?”

Saihara didn’t say anything, mouth pressing into a fine line, only wobbling a bit.

“Also, Saihara-chan, you hid that from me, didn’t you? You knew who I was, right? There was no other reason to know that I—”

Ouma’s breath got knocked out of him when Saihara crashed into him, causing him to stop talking in his panic.

“W-What...What are you doing!?” He asked, trying to pry Saihara off of him in a flurry. “Get off of m—” He cut himself off, realizing his own shaking as Saihara held him tighter. At first what had felt like a restrictive hug, something more meant to keep him from going away, became something more protective and familiar and Ouma felt himself sinking into it, sinking slowly to the ground with Saihara holding him, eyes closed. Saihara’s fingers curled more around his shirt, still refusing to open his eyes, as if it was a delusion that he was seeing Ouma, as if when he opened his eyes he would be greeted by something other than Ouma staring him back down.

Ouma still kept his guard up, especially for anything that was going to come behind him, but it was hard when he was shaking and becoming filled with pain. As much as Saihara intended to calm him down with his hug, he had also done a bit of the opposite too, Ouma feeling more and more pain. Ouma knew it wasn’t Saihara’s fault, per say. He leaned further into the hug, allowing Saihara to press his head onto Ouma’s shoulder.

“Weren’t you supposed to take him to your room?” A cold voice interrupted their moment. Ouma, who felt at this point as if he was going to get whiplash, immediately looked up to see another figure in the distance, near a door that was very similar looking to the nurse’s door on his side. Saihara didn’t seem to react badly to her voice though, so he figured this wasn’t somebody he had to worry about at that immediate moment.

“Erm, right. Sorry.” Saihara gave a nervous chuckle and untangled himself from Ouma, clearing his throat and trying to give some impression that he had good control over himself. He stood up and reached his hand out to help Ouma up as well. Ouma looked at the hand and then back to the woman in the shadows, who apparently could give two less shits about what was happening. Ouma took the hand, feeling relieved that he had made such a decision when the ground started to swim in front of him when he stood up. Saihara, as best a he could, helped to support Ouma before Ouma realized that he should just try to stay still at that point and wait for it to go away.

“Doing better?” Saihara asked, giving him a small smile.

“Never,” he joked, giving an even bigger smile back, causing Saihara’s own to widen.

“Here, let’s do what she said and go back to my room.”

As they went into Saihara’s room, Saihara sent the girl at the end of the hall a small smile, in which she responded to with the slight flick of her head, a smile betraying her cold demeanor and look, peaking out a bit without her being able to stop it. Ouma noted that the positioning of Saihara’s room was very familiar and actually made some sense when Ouma thought about it. Saihara’s room, much like his own room, was right next the door. In fact, if there wasn’t a wall separating them, Ouma was sure their rooms would just end up being the same room.  

That explains how he was able to hear Ouma scream so clearly at the very least.

“Oh, this is right next to where my room is?” Ouma fished, trying to get Saihara to directly admit it to him.

“Hmm, probably,” Saihara admitted, sitting down on the bed. He pat the spot next to him and Ouma took that as his cue to sit next to him.

Everything in Saihara’s room looked the same as his did, and Ouma was a bit surprised when he noticed this. He would have thought that there would have been some kind of variation between the rooms on the two sides, but no, everything was still kept the same. Ouma sighed.

“What now?” Ouma asked. “Why did you even want me to come over here? What was all that work for? Why couldn’t we have done this earlier?”

Saihara laughed, and Ouma found himself having to look away, trying to calm down his emotions before they became too much for him to handle. Saihara was a really stunning looking guy, and it didn’t help that his golden eyes captivated Ouma every time that he looked into them. “You’ve got a lot of questions, don’t you? So do I, but I’ll try to answer yours to the best of my ability. I wanted you to come over here because you were starting to remember and… I couldn’t let you be like that. That’s really it.”

Ouma gave a sigh, making Saihara pause in his explanation. “Was that a lie I just heard?”

Saihara’s smile became so big that Ouma was afraid that he was going to get jaw pain from it. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier for you to say that to me,” he laughed out. “Anyway, no, not exactly. I just didn’t tell a lie about the whole thing, only the ‘that’s really it,’ part.”

“Why?”

Saihara bit his lip before sighing. “The other reason was that I wanted to check to make sure that you were actually okay and that they really hadn’t done anything to you like they said they wouldn’t.”

Ouma scoffed. “Who is this _them_?”

“I can’t answer that…”

“It is because you don’t know?”

Saihara scratched his head nervously. “No, it’s because I do know that I can’t tell anyone, especially not you. They would have an absolute field day with that, and it is hard enough as is trying to get them to listen to me after what I’ve done.”

“Well, tell me when you can stop being so vague or whatever, and until then I’ll keep asking. Is it aliens? Are they making it so you can’t tell me? How about cats? I bet it was the cat overlords, always stirring up trouble.

Saihara put his hand up to his mouth, trying to stifle his laugh, but failing miserably.

“No,” Saihara managed to say when he was more composed. “It’s neither of those, sadly. Or maybe not so sadly.”

“Aw, well then...what is it?” He tried again, trying to see if that had made any difference.

“As much as I admire your persistence, Ouma-kun, I really can’t tell you yet. It could mess a lot of things up and that’s the last thing I want to happen right now.”

“I never even got to introduce myself to you…” Ouma trailed off in mock disappointment.

“Ah, um, well if you want, you can pretend as if I never said your name. I do already know who you are, but if you feel inclined to introduce yourself to me then go ahead, I don’t mind.”

“But there’s no fun in that if you already know! But hey, what’s your name? Is it really Saihara or is it something different?”

“Saihara is just my last name. My full name is Saihara Shuuichi.”

“Oh, so you really did go all out there with your notes. Hmph, how foolish of you, what if I wasn’t careful enough to shred them? Then they would know who you were!”

“Erm, right, but they would also know who I was talking to. Plus, I don’t think it matters if they found them. I only wanted you to shred them that first time we talked because I was scared they would back out on their deal.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because, well, I...” Saihara gave a loud sigh and rubbed the bridge of his forehead in aggravation. “I hate doing this,” he mumbled.

Ouma furrowed his eyebrows. “Hate doing what, Saihara-chan?”

“I hate not being able to just tell you right now. I hate not being able to just say what I want to say to you.”

“But you have been, right? In the notes we were passing, that was all you, right?”

Saihara gave another sigh. “Yes, I guess. It may as well not have been. I couldn’t just say the obvious things I wanted to say to you. Every once in a while they would come and check what I was writing, and that was annoying, especially the first note that we passed back and forth. They haven’t done it in a while, and probably never will again after what just happened. A few of them are still shocked and a bit tender from that.”

“Did something big happen?” Ouma asked, a bit worried over it.

“I guess you could say that.”

“What happened, or are you not allowed to tell me that either?” He teased Saihara.

“No, I can tell you that. I think you’ll understand too when I start to talk a bit about it. One of the nurses was recently killed and its had all of the nurses and doctors a bit on the edge.”

Ouma felt his throat run dry. “Oh? How did she die? Do you know?”

“ _They_ killed her.” Saihara had spat the words so venomously that Ouma was scared from the change in tone.

“Is this the same them that’s behind what you said earlier?”

Saihara nodded in agreement. “The very same ones.”

Ouma swallowed. “How far do their hands reach in this place anyway? Will they actually get away with something like that?”

“Their hands reach everywhere here, although I suppose it’s less their hands and more their ears. As to them getting away with it...no, they won’t, not on my watch at least. But, sadly, it’s just going to be one of many more things that they will have to face. Unfortunately, filing a murder charge on them will be almost impossible.”

“Why?”

Saihara gave a small smile. “There’s lot of things that could be answered with.”

“Why was she killed?” He felt breathless and the shaking had started to return again.

Saihara observed him, and hesitantly reached out his arm to rub Ouma’s shoulder comfortingly.

“Because she did something she wasn’t supposed to do—she ‘endangered’ your welfare. Well, not really, but they didn’t take it any way _but_ that way. So they killed her. Can’t have anyone messing with their own failing plans.”

“Who endangered my ‘welfare?’”

“Your nurse, of course.”

“How do you know that?” Ouma asked, growing terrified, and shook Saihara’s hand off of his shoulder.

“I asked her to do one thing, that’s why. I asked her to watch over you, and she got killed because of it.”

   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may already know, but next week I will not be updating as I will be away for the weekend!! Sorry about that! 
> 
> Anyway, onto this chapter...I hope you guys like it!! I'm kind of nervous about it, but I hope people end up liking it anyway. Trust me, there is still a lot to do with this fic, so if you're worried him meeting Saihara like this might take away from the fic, don't worry!! 
> 
> Also, I'd like to thank my friend who, at 5 am while I was up talking to her and writing this at the same time, sent me this https://imgur.com/dSqS8LS lol thank you!! 
> 
> I'm pretty sure the FBI agent that watches my computer is freaking out I've been researching lockpicking all week smh 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed reading this and have a great rest of your day!!
> 
> EDIT: https://kurozakou.tumblr.com/post/172973645945/dscf-meeting-ok-i-had-to-do-something-for-this GO AND LOOK AT THIS AMAZING COMIC


	10. Delusion, Sentimentality

“You asked her to ‘watch over’ me?” Ouma accused, glaring at Saihara.

Saihara gave a resigned sigh. “Yes. I knew she was going to do something, I just didn’t know _what_.”

“So did you give her those white clothes?”

“White clothes?” Saihara asked reeling back a bit. “No...what’s this about?” Then he sighed.”Is that why you screamed? That’d make sense I guess. Didn’t expect to hear you say that though,” Saihara admitted to Ouma.

“What do you mean? Didn’t you just say you were the one who asked her to watch over me? Shouldn’t you have known something about that?” He accused.

“No!” Saihara refuted, eyes wide, now deep in self thought. “I thought they meant something different when they said, ‘endangering your welfare.’ That would explain some things though, if you’re telling the truth. And then that would also explain…” Saihara trailed off, mumbling under his breath, trying to connect the dots in his mind.

“You really have to doubt that I’m lying about that.”

“What? Oh. Yes, Ouma-kun, I still have trouble telling sometimes with you, yes.”

Ouma huffed, but continued what he was saying, trying not to be combative. “You really didn’t know?” Ouma asked, squinting at Saihara.

“I swear it!” Saihara kept his ground on the matter. “Did she do it because...hm…” Saihara went back to being lost in his own thoughts for the moment, placing his hand over his mouth in thought.

Ouma tilted his face, staring at Saihara. Was he lying? No, he couldn’t be. Despite the raised voice and suspicious account, it was not the case. Saihara was simply ruffled; shaken up a bit from his previous assessment of the situation.

“Good, because you shouldn’t lie to me,” Ouma teased him, hinting at his acceptance of the claims for the moment.

Saihara nodded, seemingly silently understanding him.

“So why did she do that if you didn’t tell her to?”

“This is very interesting to me, too, but I think I may know why.”

“Oh? Do tell, please.”

“No.”

Ouma frowed.

Saihara, upon seeing Ouma’s frown to his blunt answer, gave a nervous and strained laugh. “I’d love to, but I—”

“Can’t?” Ouma glared at him.

“Yes,” Saihara said slowly, speaking carefully, clearly knowing the situation he was in. “I understand you don’t like that answer.”

“Should I?”

Saihara sighed. “No.”

“Glad we’re on the same page with _one_ thing at least,” Ouma said, a bit of venom sneaking into his voice. This was a mistake, he was starting to realize. The walls felt like they were getting tighter around him, trapping him with Saihara instead of being comforted or entertained by his presence.

“Listen, if I could tell you, I would.” Saihara wiped his eyes with the back of his arm, and it was only then that Ouma realized there had been tears pooling up in them.  “Right. Back to the point.”

“That’s not a ‘back to the point,’ kind of attitude, Saihara-chan.”

Saihara chose not to acknowledge him, instead bringing the map out of his pocket.

“Oh, so that’s where you put it,” Ouma said, putting his fist on his hips, his stance ready for talk of strategy.  

“I was looking at this.”

“I bet,” Ouma shot back with sarcasm.

Saihara pointed to the nurses station which Ouma had put the words ‘CPU.’ “Are those computers still there?”

“Yeah, they haven’t taken them away or anything.”

“Good. Here.” Saihara grabbed his pen out of his pocket and wrote down a note on it.

“Huh? What’s that?” Ouma asked once Saihara had pulled his hand away.

“It’s what the nurses use to get onto the computers! We’re allowed on them from time to time, so I have easy access to the password. But...you didn’t get that info from me, of course,” Saihara told him, grinning slyly.

“No, of course not~” Ouma agreed with a sing song tone, laughing as he looked at the passcode. “This’ll work?”

Saihara winced. “It should? It works on this side. I don’t know why it wouldn’t.”

“Hmm, thanks then.”

“This, though, I’m concerned about.” Saihara pointed to the names that Ouma had put notes about having drugs. “This is not what they should be doing.”

Ouma stayed silent, trying to see if Saihara was going to elaborate on that.

“Can you describe what this is about?” Saihara asked, fixated on the individuals taking drugs.

“Sure, because I’ll know all about the pharmacological choices of our jailers...er...I mean nurses and doctors.”

“If we work together on this, both of our parts can go a lot smoother, Ouma-kun.”

“Right, right, I’m just saying. Anyway the pills. I don’t know anything about them!”

“So then why was it so important that you wasted your time writing it down? If you didn’t know anything it shouldn’t have mattered that much to you.”

“I guess there might be a reason I wrote them down. What does it matter to you?”

“It matters to me because I didn’t know. There’s many things I think I’m learning I didn’t know, that I thought I knew, that I should have known.”

“Nothing like that is happening on this side?”

“No! Definitely not. They’re walking on thin ice right now as it is. In fact, they’ve already got one foot submerged in the ice cold water, and I don’t think they’re too keen on letting the other one sink in. The ice looked like it was thick, but it was actually thin, too thin, and this is the consequences of everyone’s actions.”

“What are these consequences again, Mr. Metaphor?”

“The consequence is that they’re sinking—fast too.”

 “Sinking?”

“Ouma-kun.”

“Fine, fine, I get it.  From what I’ve seen and observed, they’re really pushy about the pills. I don’t know exactly to a ‘T’ what they do, but they sure do make you feel alert, strong, and intellectually superior,” Ouma said with full throated sarcasm.

Saihara glared at him. “Remember what I just said about working together on this?”

Were they ever together on this? Had they ever been on the same page? No, Ouma decided, they never were. He expected it, of course, that Saihara knew more than him probably, but he seemed to be an infinite well of knowledge, and Ouma was being denied access to it. “Yes, of course I remember it! If you really want to know what I think they do then I’ll tell you. I don’t know what they do for sure, I’ve avoided them as much as I could. What I do know though is that they seem to relieve pains but also keep you tired and compliant to a certain extent. There, does that help you?”

“Perhaps, can you tell me more?”  

For the first time, Ouma voiced his greed. “What’s in it for me?”

“The results of whatever happens.”

“Will what happened to Nurse-chan happen to me?”

“I-Probably not,” Saihara said, but Ouma picked up on the hint of uncertainty in his voice. “I don’t think they would dare to do something like that. People would go crazy.”

“What would they care? They don’t know me. And who the fuck is “they.””

“Umm…”

“Wow! So many secrets,” Ouma accused him. “You know, the nurses know, whoever is doing all of this knows, the whole _world_ knows apparently, but yet I don’t.”

“Wait! Let me explain!”

“I don’t want you to explain, Saihara-chan. I don’t want to hear lies. Give me that,” He told Saihara and pointed at the map in his hands.

“I promise I can explain if you just hold on!”

“You’ve already said you can’t. You’ve already said you can’t explain, that you wished you could tell me but you can’t. So what’s the point of lying straight to my face and tangling yourself up further in a spider’s web. Don’t you think there’s some times when you should just accept the situation you’ve gotten yourself into?”

Saihara stayed silent, turning to face the wall with a blank stare.

Ouma reached for the map in his hands and Saihara let go of it limply. “I’m glad we agree.” Ouma stood up, and walked over to the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to fill that out for you?” Saihara asked, speaking up numbly, still not turning to face Ouma.

“Yeah, pretty damn sure.”

Saihara stood up, finally taking action on what Ouma was doing. “Sit back down, we’re not done yet.”

“Oh, quite the contrary Saihara. We are definitely done.”

“I didn’t come this far, none of us did, just to let you let your ego and anger get in the way of everything. So sit back down and let’s talk this out.”

“What more could you possibly think we can talk about?” Ouma asked Saihara, mockingly. “We’ve already talked about you hiding things from me, you lying to me, and more of you hiding things from me and lying even more at the same time. What the fuck else could there be there to talk about, Saihara-chan?”

Saihara stood up, walking over to Ouma. “We’re not done yet. Sit back down.”

Ouma met his eyes, staring into the shaking eyes of Saihara. Ouma swallowed. “Why should I listen to anything you have to say?”

“Because it's your one way to get out of this situation. You can find out as much as you want, I'll even help you, but if you chose to walk out that door and go back, then your fate is almost sealed completely. This might be our one chance to do something like this. I don't think anything will happen, but you must know somewhere deep inside you that it was a possibility all along. Never knowing if something could come out of nowhere, something you've done wrong, something you've done right.

“What I'm trying to say is that there's nothing that would stop them from doing it per say, but there’s also things stopping them from doing it at the same time. It leaves you in this kind of grey area that can be hard to define. The line between dead and alive. In all senses, you should die here. According to them, according what the world knows, you should never have existed and since you never should have existed that means that you can never be expected to live, right? But, you’re you, aren’t you? You’re standing here in front of me, breathing, alive, talking and doing things that could put you in danger, you knew that.”

Ouma stayed silent.

Saihara gave a small sheepish laugh and a gentle sigh. “You knew you were putting yourself in danger. I knew I was putting myself in danger. So why don’t you sit back down and talk this out with me. You say we’re not in the same boat, but we are. I’m just as clueless as you are about the future. Nothing is ever set in stone, is it? I might know some things that you don’t, but please try to take my word for it when I say I would tell you if I could. Instead, I have to settle for helping you to find the answers on your own until such a day can come.”

“You realize, Saihara-chan, that you just—passionately for sure—puked out an embarrassingly large amount of redacted gibberish.”

“Stay, please.”

Ouma looked at him with doubt. “I’ll stay if you can answer me one thing.”

Saihara hesitated before responding. “What?”

“Tell me why did you tell her to watch me if you knew that she might do something reckless. What was the deal between you and I and how did you know that you could have someone watch over me like that?”

Before Saihara could even open his mouth to respond, the door sprung open, almost hitting Ouma in the face as he stumbled back. Saihara got up from his place on the bed, checking to see if Ouma was alright.

“What’s going on?” Saihara asked, staring at the girl in his doorway.

Ouma bristled looking at the figure with a mix of frustration and caution. She was there when he first crossed over to Saihara’s side of the door.

“You—” the figure pointed at Ouma, making his face scrunch up, “—need to go. Now.”

“What’s this all about?” Saihara asked behind him, still somehow managing to keep his calm.

“Have you looked at the time lately? Honestly, I thought you would have been more aware of things like this considering the trouble it could get us in.” She turned to Ouma again. “What did I just tell you? Leave.”

“And what if I don’t want to go?”

Ouma saw it before he could do anything about it, saw the way that her fists clenched close to her side, her fingernails digging in deep to her palm. She reached out to grab his shirt and bunched it up tight in her fist, making him jolt forward a bit with the motion. “You’re going to leave. If I knew you were never coming back I would be happy, but…” she looked at Saihara who looked uncertain about what to do in this situation. “Listen, don’t get yourself killed before you even accomplish anything, alright? What a waste of your second chance you’ve been given if you’re just going to throw it away again.”

“That’s not to say we’re not going to help!” Saihara finally piped in. “I’ll try to make sure that they don’t try to do anything to you that they’re not allowed to. Watch your back regardless.”

Ouma wanted to laugh, even under the grip he was being held under. He should have felt scared of her, should probably be struggling, but all he could focus on was their words. He wanted to tell Saihara that he had always been watching his back, that he knew all of this, that he knew he was a target to begin with. It was all such bullshit.

“Thanks.” Ouma said, looking between the two.

“Harukawa-san, you can probably let him go now. You didn’t really need to in the first place.”

Harukawa just glared at Saihara and uncurled her fist from his shirt. “You know how I feel about him.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just do things like that.”

“Why not again?” she grumbled under her breath. Whether Saihara heard it and ignored it or he really didn’t hear it was unknown as he started talking again.

“Ouma-kun, she’s right, we should probably not keep you here too much longer. It should be safe to go back over around this time for you, correct?”

If Momota saw him, he was never going to hear the fucking end of it. “Yeah, should be. No one should really be up besides me right now.” Secretly, his heart was pounding, hard. He’d thought about going over, but now faced with going back it was a bit more difficult.

“Good. Then let’s get you over there, shall we?”

Ouma hummed his agreement, still eyeing the new girl a bit warily.

They led Ouma back into the hall, leaving Saihara’s door open.

“This is it?” Ouma asked, looking at the door in front of him, the two others to his back.

“For right now,” Saihara responded. “You can come again. We _have_ to talk more about some things. I never got to answer your question!”

“I’ll have to hold you to it.”

Harukawa remained silent, watching the exchange.

Ouma cautiously opened up the door, making sure that it opened slowly, trying to minimize the sound it was making. He poked his head through the crack in the door—it looked safe enough.

He turned back around, ready to wave Saihara a goodbye, but found Saihara staring at the wall, bottom lip trembling. He almost stopped what he was doing to rush over and ask Saihara what was wrong when a pointed glare from Harukawa stopped him in his tracks. She nodded her head towards the door. Without a second thought of wanting to stay where he was, he slipped back over to the other side, new information in hand. Behind him, he closed the door gently, finally sealing him back over there for the time.

Harukawa looked at Saihara. “Well at least you didn’t get your hopes too high up before hand.”

Saihara sighed sadly. “Yeah.”

“Were you going to tell him?”

“Sure, why not?”

Harukawa sighed. “You really do want to die.”

Saihara looked at her. “No, I don’t. What I want it for everything to finally come to a close. We’ve made it this far.”

Harukawa considered it for a moment with silence. “There’s no changing your mind, is there?”

“Don’t call the kettle black.”

She gave a small laugh of amusement. “Touché.”

They both stared at the door.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” Saihara finally asked.

“He’s an annoyance, of course he’ll come back.”

Silence.

“You’re letting your feelings get the best of you,” Harukawa claimed.

This time Saihara didn’t even say anything, staring her straight in the eyes with an accusatory look.

“It’s true,” she said, meeting his eyes. “You have this thing where you think everything can go back to the way it was before when that’s not the case. You’re letting yourself get wrapped up in it and not just waiting for things to happen like we said we would.”

“They’re purposely going slow,” he mumbled.  

She nodded her head. “I agree. There’s no way Team Danganronpa is actually this slow. Well, you did end their show, it only makes sense that they wouldn’t want to push through anything you say fast.”

“I think you forget your part in all of this too.”

“No, but you were the one who started it.”

“I couldn’t accept it. No matter if we did all wake up, no matter if everyone did end up living, that still doesn’t mean that what we all felt wasn’t real.”

Harukawa stared at the door again. “Yeah, I get that.”

“Do you ever think they can go back to the way they were?” Saihara asked, sadness in his eyes.

“I think we’re seeing proof of it, with the way things have been going with him.”

Saihara hesitated for a moment. “Yes, but I meant—”

Harukawa sighed at his insistence. “You’re getting your hopes up over this again. I think so, but who knows what the future holds, you said that yourself, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I did,” he said and gave a small laugh. “I’m sure everything will be just fine. My feelings from the past, they’re never going to stop influencing me in some way. That’s the same for everyone, isn’t it?”

Harukawa didn’t look at him, instead forcing her glare onto the door. “Do you want to die?”

“Sentimentality for the past is a weird thing, but sometimes it's necessary to hold onto those feelings and put them as a goal in front of you of when things were different.”

“...Do you think it could happen to everyone?”

“If you think it could happen to him, then I’m sure of it. We just have to keep sorting things out until we get there.”

“Fine. Even if I don’t want him over here again, there’s still more we have to do.”

“You’re right. For right now though, why don’t we focus on going to fill Yumeno-san in on what just happened. I’m sure she’ll be happy at least a little.”

“Probably about as happy as I was,” Harukawa mumbled under her breath, making Saihara laugh quietly at her remark.

Saihara took a second to look behind him, even as they were walking away from it. He wanted to walk towards it, wanted to say everything again and again, no matter how much trouble it got him in, no matter how much Team Danganronpa hated him for it. It was over. Everything was done. But yet, they were still here, all of them, and he supposed that was just the way that things had always been for people when they signed up. History repeated itself until someone decided that history didn’t have to dictate the future, that history could be wrong, history didn’t always hold the patterns that could show the future and that they didn’t have to bow to some predetermined fate or plan.

It would be okay. As long as he could keep saying that, even if he couldn’t keep saying that, even if he lost his voice, it would be okay. He believed in that.

* * *

It was silent, which was a good thing, but regardless he still took a quick look around to ease his mind. When he found nothing, he relaxed, but only slightly so.

Making sure to still keep his guard up, he walked quietly back to his room, trying not to let his paranoia get the best of him and make him stop every other second. He walked back into his room and turned the light on, sucking in a sharp breath when it occurred to him that someone could have come into his room while he was gone and was hiding in a dark corner, ready to attack. So he checked the room too, checking to see if anything looked as if it had been touched or out of place from what he remembered. When he was finally reassured that nothing was missing, he sighed and fell back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling, letting his arm holding the map hang limply over the side of the bed before he finally pulled the clipboard back over and shoved it back in, before throwing it right back to where it had been.

He took a moment, thinking over Saihara’s words and massaging his forehead in his frustration. Sure, he was mad at Saihara for hiding so much stuff, but was it true when he said that he would help Ouma? Well, he had given Ouma the supposed password to the computers, so maybe he was telling mostly the truth when he said he wanted to help. Still didn’t excuse the fact that Saihara thought that it was just okay to leave so much out of such an important narrative.

What the actual fuck was he going to do? The deeper her got, the more he exposed himself, the more he himself got tangled up in a web.

He knew the dangers of course, but it was more frustrating than ever.

Amami, Saihara, Momota, Harukawa; the list of people who he was in debt to was growing, and that made him more uncomfortable than anything he had dealt with so far.

He turned off the light and wormed his way under the blanket, unsure of what the future would bring, but knowing it would probably be something bad, just to fuck with him more.

* * *

“What the fuck was that!?” Momota said, pounding his fist down on the table.

“Do that one more time I swear to God,” Amami glared at him, narrowly avoiding things spilling on him again.

“What the fuck was what, Momota-chan?” Ouma asked teasingly.

“You wouldn’t let me stay out there with you. I had half the mind—”

“You have a brain?! Wow, you find out something new every day!”

“Why you little—”

“Because it didn’t involve you,” Ouma cut him off again and answered his original question calmly. “Feel privileged that you even know what is going on in the slightest.”

“Hey, maybe you both should really stop,” Amami said, trying to mediate between the two.

“Maybe he should mind his own business,” Ouma shot back.

“Maybe _you_ should realize the kind of situation you’re in.”

“Hey, not to get off topic, but I haven’t seen your nurse around in a bit.”

Ouma raised an eyebrow, looking at Momota smugly.

Momota looked him in the eye back. “No, seriously, what happened to her?”

Ouma could do nothing but sigh and ignore him.

* * *

To pass the time, he stared at the ceiling and tried to remember anything before falling into a nap that he was sure would be quick.

* * *

_“Shouldn’t you be training right now, Saihara-chan? Leave me alone.”_

_“You looked lonely out here, all alone. The stars look pretty tonight wouldn’t you say?”_

_“I thought you were the Ultimate Detective. Leave the space stuff to Momota-chan.”_

_A gentle, cute laugh. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to appreciate the beauty of this moment.”_

_“What beauty?”_

_“The beauty that we’re still here, together.”_

_“Even if I’m a bad person who does bad things, why do you stay and say things like that?”_

_“Because I love you.”_

_“...I love you too, Saihara-chan. Never forget that, no matter what my actions might be, I love you without a doubt, Saihara-chan, and that’s the truth.”_

_“I’ll keep that close to my heart and remember that. Thank you, Ouma-kun, for having faith in me to stay with you through whatever might happen.”_

_“Don’t mess it up. I’ll be counting on you to keep proving that.”_

_“I don’t think that will be a problem. Now why don’t you go to bed? I’m sure tomorrow with you will be just as beautiful.”_

_“Bleh, so sentimental over everything. But fine, if Saihara-chan thinks I should get some rest, I will. Stay safe, my beloved. If I don’t see you tomorrow I’ll be very angry.”_

_“I’m sure of it Ouma-kun. The same goes for you. It would be hard for me to lose you too.”_

_“So then don’t ever leave me to never lose me. Easy, Saihara-chan!”_

_“I won’t, as long as I have a choice, even if I’m not given a choice, I won’t leave you.”_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alt. chapter title: Thank you for coming to Saihara's TED Talk
> 
> Anyway...sorry for not updating Bird too like I said I would. I don't really have an excuse except to say that I had the choice of updating one of them only this week so I chose to update this one. I'm sorry for any of you who read both of those fics and was looking forward to seeing it update. The good news? Since I was adamantly working on it this week, it will come out next week and will hopefully be longer 
> 
> On another noTE, LOOK AT THIS AMAZING ART: https://kurozakou.tumblr.com/post/172815126785/the-delusion-sentimentality-compensation AND https://kurozakou.tumblr.com/post/172973645945/dscf-meeting-ok-i-had-to-do-something-for-this AA THANK YOU SO MUCH AGAIN <3  
> (and to all of you who were screaming in the reblogs and saying how much you liked my fic, thank you so much as well!!) Please go check out their art because honestly it's amazing!! (Also, I'll be editing the comic link onto last weeks chapter's end notes as well) 
> 
> I know this is already a lot for an end note, but I'd also like to say that I know I just took a break, and hopefully I won't have to take another one before the end of this fic, but seeing as how the end of the school year is coming up, it may be necessary for me to take a week off some time in the future if I'm too exhausted from all my finals lol But for right now, we should be good for a bit!! 
> 
> I don't know how I feel about that last scene, but 
> 
> Oh, another note: I've messed with the tagging a little bit, making it more accurate to what has happened and what will happen regarding the ship, but if you've made it this far it's probably all good lol
> 
> I hope you all like the chapter!!
> 
> EDIT: I'm a liar, I'm probably not going to update this week either, but who knows


	11. Trust

“Sit up for God’s sake,” Momota complained.

Ouma looked up at him from where he was laying wrapped up comfortably under the blankets, awakened from another dream about Saihara, unamused. He made no reach for the chessboard that lay set up between them. “Why?”

“We’re going to play and you’re going tell me what happened when I, undoubtably, win.”

“Go away, idiot. Didn’t you learn anything the first time we played?”

“Which is exactly why I’m going to win against you.”

Ouma groaned. “You winning against me isn’t going to make me respect you or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Momota sputtered for a moment, as if he was surprised he had been seen through. “No,” he finally said.

“Then why are you here if not to gain my respect and get info out of me? You’ve already expressed your desire to do so.”

“Well, that is, because…”

“Pathetic,” Ouma spat out.

“We need to work together on this!” Momota said, finally seeming to have come up with something.

“Work together?” Ouma questioned him.

“Yeah! Jeez, I would have thought you would have gotten it by now.”

“Well of course I get the idea in concept, but it never quite works out that even, does it? Just saying, ‘let’s work together’ is different then actually working together. Can people actually ever work together, fully, without holding back a single thing? ‘Working together’ is such a frail thing. ‘Together’ by itself is a word that demands commitment from all the parties involved.”

“Agreed! And I am committed. Committed to helping. What’s so wrong about wanting to help?”

“Humans don’t ‘help’ one another unless there’s something in it for them, too.”

“That’s not true!” Momota closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Selfless acts of assistance and kindness can often be as rewarding, more so even, than actions of a self serving nature,” Momota said, projecting calm and wisdom.  

Ouma rolled his eyes. “Do you even realize you foiled your own point? Humans are not selfless ever. Everyone has their own desires and then they have similar desires of others, and if those two desires happen to collide then they might work together, but it is simply ignorant to say that both parties won’t selfishly benefit someway by the end of it, period.” Ouma smirked, his face becoming twisted with something sly. “You must simply weigh what the other person, or persons, may potentially benefit from against your own benefits of working together with them. If yours outweigh theirs, it makes sense to work together with them, even if you might be putting someone else in danger while you seek your desired outcome. Working together is hard. It’s hard to see all the different goals, outcomes and threads, of all the different people working as a team when it usually turn into a big mess of fear, dominance, and selfish motives.  

“Are you speaking from experience? Are you saying that there is no need to work with another if your benefit does not outweigh the other’s? What about something like trust!?”

“Stop hiding behind the word trust when there can be none. People can say they trust each other as much as they want, but it still comes back to what they get out trusting each other. A sense of stability? A sense that nothing might go wrong now? There is a benefit to everything.”

“You’re so hard to talk to when you’re like this.”

“When I’m right?” Ouma asked with a small smile.

“No, when you’re just plain being an ass.”

Ouma sighed. “So are you going to be leaving now or what?”

“What more must I do for you?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do. Saying you’ll do something if I ask you, that’s not much of anything. That’s being fake.” Ouma brought his hand out from under the blanket, shifting upwards a bit. He moved a pawn. “But, I suppose, you have done a few helpful things. If you want to know something, you can come back and ask me tomorrow and maybe I’ll tell you.”

Momota paused. “Why tomorrow?”

“Where is your trust now?”

“I’m just trying to see how that makes even the slightest bit of sense. You should be able to tell me now what happened last night. As a matter of fact, you should just let me…” Momota trailed off, then sighed. “Alright, I get it. You might not trust me fully yet, especially when it comes to what you do.”

“Just accept it,” Ouma replied. Ouma, as Momota had guessed, didn’t trust him fully yet. There was only the blooming of a small bud, still in need of water and sunlight to grow. Ouma knew this was not a satisfying arrangement for Momota. Momota needed more. Was it only trust Momota sought, or was it friendship too? What would it feel like to have Momota’s blood on his hands, all because he couldn’t convince him to keep his nose where it belonged? He didn’t think he wanted to find out any time soon.

“Can I really just do that, though?”

“Yes, and you can show me that you ‘trust’ me by staying out of it, for right not at least.”

“Ugh. Alright, I’ll take your word for it!”

Good, distance yourself a little bit. In the end, it was okay if Ouma was the only target by forces yet unknown. He could outthink most and stay ahead of danger. Momota? Probably not. Saihara had claimed that Ouma probably wasn’t in any danger, but he wasn’t even sure when it came down to it really. If Ouma was in plausible danger, then it was best not to lead another on his path, for right now at least. Stealth and secrecy was still prudent. It would be way easier to be able to trust someone to watch his back, but trust was hard to give. Ouma wondered if he really ever trusted anyone. Momota and Amami sure came close, but ultimately, in the end, it came down to a matter of all of their safety. Saihara was another confusing thing entirely.   

He would have to fact gather on his own for the foreseeable future before he could even think of getting anyone else involved in his plans.

Momota noticed the time. “Oh, it’s lunch time. We should go down there.”

“Ugh, I might as well just go back to sleep over that!”

“Oh no you don’t!” Momota shouted, moving the chessboard between them to grab Ouma and pull him up.

Ouma sighed.

* * *

“Hey, have you noticed anything...different? Something feels off, but I can’t place it,” Momota asked, looking around.

“No? Why, what’s bugging you?” Amami asked between drinks of water.

Ouma looked up in curiosity. He raised an eyebrow as he looked around, trying to see if there was anything that would lead Momota to feeling off in such a way. Suddenly, understanding hit Ouma like a belly punch.

“One of you, take me back to my room, _now_ ,” he commanded them, voice deadly and cold sounding.

“Why? What’s—”

Ouma cut Amami off. “ _Now_ ,” he tried again, and this time Momota seemed to notice it too, looking at where Ouma’s gaze had been set into a glare, and scrambled to his feet, rushing around the table to grab Ouma.

“Gotta go!” Momota told Amami before rushing over to the door with Ouma.

Amami stood up. “H-Hey! Where are you going?” He asked, chasing after them.

The rest of the dining hall, if they noticed the disappearance of the three suddenly, said nothing and did nothing to break the flow of their every day chatter.

* * *

When they’d gotten back into his room, it was just as Ouma had feared.

There, like two kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar, were Akamatsu and Chabashira. They were, conspicuously, fact gathering. Just like Ouma did every night.  

Ouma bristled. “Can’t you both keep your damn hands to yourself?”

“Not when you’re clearly up to something, no,” Akamatsu said, with no hesitation. “Who knows what you could be hiding? You can’t possibly put other people in danger just because you feel like it, Ouma-kun. If you know something that other people don’t, if any of you three know something that other people don’t, that can be damaging info to someone. Plus, if you don’t want to have all the people work together, I will. This isn’t all about you, you have to understand that we have to work together if we want to accomplish anything. Working all alone, keeping secrets, is not ideal for anyone, including you.” Akamatsu sighed, looking a bit ashamed that it even had to come to something like this. Going behind his back like this. She had tried, she had tried to stick through it all, but in the end she knew she couldn’t let him do whatever he wanted without telling all the others at least something.

Behind him, he felt Momota twitch as he held the handles of his wheelchair. Momota shifted nervously on his feet. Ouma bit his lip. The message rang too true with what Momota had been saying to him. But still, no one really knew how dangerous this game had become. No one except his nurse. Ouma didn’t want anyone else to end up like Nurse-chan.  

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” he said, voicing his thoughts. “Saying I’m placing people in danger if I don’t say anything—is that really your answer to all of this?”

“We can work together and then no one will be in danger!”

“Correction, then we will _all_ be in danger.”

“Do you know of danger though? What kind of danger could we get into? See, this is what I mean.”

Ouma thought for a quick moment. If he told the truth, and explained the potential dangers ahead, what would that say about him? He didn’t want her to leap ahead of herself and place herself or others in danger, but what could he say? If she wanted to, she could potentially rally everyone to work together, and who knows how that would impact his information flow, strategy, and designs of escape? If he lied and said that there was no danger, he definitely would be allowing her and others to walk around with a fake sense of confidence that they were safe. Perhaps those who felt a minor sense of fread would finally relax if they thought they were safer than they really were.

“I don’t know about danger. We’re all just talking hypothetically here! You’re going off of the assumption that I even know anything at all!”

“Of course you know something,” she said, glaring at him. “What I’m trying to figure out is why you’re so opposed to others just helping you. It involves us too.”

“There’s nothing to need help with,” he said, finally starting to regain his cool over the situation. There was no need for him to take any risks here. He could get through this just by being calm. “If you want to work together, I understand, but you also must know that you’re just accusing me too. You don’t know what everyone else knows either. Hell, someone could be spying on us!”

She thought for a moment. “That’s true, I guess. I suppose someone could be spying on us. I don’t know exactly what’s going on.  I’m trying to work together with you so I can know everything and I _can_ help others. I want to get out of here as much as everyone else does,” she told him, her voice gentle, but holding a hint of sadness to it. “I guess we should leave now, shouldn’t we?”

“What?!” Chabashira shouted. “We can’t just leave if this degenerate—”

Akamatsu gave a small laugh. “Really, I think things will be okay for right now. Let’s give them some time, and let’s give ourselves some time too.”

Chabashira studied Akamatsu for a moment, then Ouma and the two behind him before sighing angrily. “The minute something bad happens because of you degenerates— something that could have been prevented if you had told us…” she trailed off, glaring at them as if to show her conviction to do something.

Ouma did nothing but keep a blank stare ahead, refusing to give his agreeance or disagreeance.

“Sorry, for causing any trouble for you,” Akamatsu told him as she was walking past him and out of his room. “Oh, one other thing. I’ll be here, if you ever need me. I’ll show you the power of working together, if that’s what you need me to show you one day,” she said, giving him a powerful smile.

Chabashira grumbled something Ouma couldn’t hear as she walked past him, following after Akamatsu. Once they were gone, and the door had been shut, Ouma leapt out of the wheelchair and flipped through the clipboard, sighing in relief when nothing was gone. Although, as he looked at the clipboard and the map, he thought he gained an insight into her and Momota and their point of view. He saw the equation of their thinking as if he was staring at it on a whiteboard. Teamwork = Trust, Trust = Teamwork, Teamwork + Trust = Survival.

And that was just as important as anything he had learned before.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I'm sorry this is the shortest chapter to date, but I'm sick and have been sleeping on and off this week (even more then usual lol) and as such didn't write much, and also the next chapter of bird is taking a lot of time so I'm sorry this is so short but I think this chapter does it's job well enough and doesn't stretch out unnecessarily. 
> 
> Also, thank you for about 5.5k hits right around now! Thank you all for reading!! 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it!!
> 
> EDIT: Also, a quick note, I will not be updating anything until around 6/2 due to college scholarship things I need to apply to, end of school year projects, and general lack of time. However, if I upload anything, it will be my saiouma exchange once those come out and I get my prompt, so don't think I'm not updating either fic anymore, I just need a quick minute to get some shit done, I'm very sorry!

**Author's Note:**

> My mind blanked several times during writing Tsumugi's name and I started to type Hatsune Miku smh  
> Anyways, hope you guys like this so far  
> I'm always open to constructive criticism and/or to just talk about the fic in general!  
> I have a pretty good idea/outline of where this story is going, so it shouldn't come out too bad as long as my ideas don't became a huge dumpster fire before I get to the parts I already know I want to be in this.  
> We'll just have to see. This is like my first time writing fanfiction in a year or so, so if it feels like my writing skills are the equivalent of watching somebody beat a dead horse you know isn't going to stand back up, that's why.


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